As I’ve said, several years have already passed since all these events took place, but I didn’t feel strong enough until now and sufficiently recovered from my terrible emotions to attempt to recount my adventures. Now it’s done.
I suspect that no one will believe me, but I can’t help that. Everyone remembers Anthea, its arrival in the skies of Ecuador and its sudden disappearance…but I alone can say: I was there.
I have no witnesses that I can call. I can offer no other proof than my sincerity.
Notes
1 tr. as “The Secret of the Scaffold” in The Scaffold, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-932983-01-2.
2 also tr. as “The Revolt of the Machines” in The Superhumans, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-935558-77-4.
3 latter version tr. as Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-934543-37-5.
4 Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707) was the foremost military engineer of his era, famed for his expertise in building fortifications, and also in breaking through them.
5 The French verb voler means both to steal and to fly, permitting the observation that “Thieves will fly” to become a rather obvious play on words that only a student would think worth the bother.
6 “La Flûte” was first published in 1843.
7 The photophone, involving the transmission of speech by means of a beam of light, was invented by Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter in 1880; Bell thought it by far his most important invention, but its range was far surpassed by Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless transmission system, and it was superseded, although it was the ancestor of modern transmissions via fiber-optic cable.
8 Pliny the Younger observed the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii from the home of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, in Misenum; his letters to Cornelius Tacitus describing his experiences have survived.
9 The physician and surgeon Aristide Verneuil (1823-1895), who collected his various papers in the three-volume Mémoires de chirurgie (1877-88)
10 A term sarcastically coined by Verneuil to stigmatize excess in his colleagues; it means “the itch to cut”—i.e., operative mania.
11 Pierre Roux (1853-1933) was one of Louis Pasteur’s closest collaborators, who helped found the Pasteur Institute in the late 1880s and manufactured a serum there from 1891 onwards for the treatment of diphtheria.
12 Author’s note: “Dr. Déclat, from 1861 onwards, inaugurated surgical antisepsis. Déclat, after Raspail but before Pasteur, glimpsed microbial panspermia and therapeutic microbicide. Among many others, those are titles of immortal glory for the venerated scientist.” The reference is to Gilbert Déclat (1827-1896).
13 Jules Péan (1830-1896) was a diehard opponent of Pasteur who refused to accept his theories of disease; he implanted the prosthesis in question—an artificial shoulder-joint—in 1893, but it had to be removed in 1895 after becoming infected. J.-P. Michaëls, who published a book on prosthetic apparatus intended to replace bone and cartilage, was a professor at the École Dentiare de Paris. Joseph-Louis Renaut (1844-1917) was a noted histologist who carried out microscopic analyses of degenerating nerve fibres in sufferers from muscular dystrophy.
14 Henri Moissan (1852-1907) subsequently became famous for his work with fluorine, which earned him a Nobel Prize. His technique for refining acetylene gas was useful, but credit for the early development of the gas as a fuel belongs to Marcellin Berthelot.
15 Raoul Pictet (1846-1929) succeeded in producing droplets of liquid oxygen in 1877.
16 Claude Goubet (1837-1903) developed the first electrically powered submarine in 1885, and carried out a much-publicized demonstration of its capabilities in Cherbourg in 1890. The navy preferred a rival model and he died ruined, like many inventors.
17 This reference is probably fictitious; Eugène-Louis Bouvier (1856-1944), the famous naturalist of that name, was an entomologist, and the popularization of the idea of the latent “third eye” was primarily due to the occultist Helena Blavatsky and her Theosophical scholarly fantasy.
18 H. R. Cassel patented a method of extracting gold from seawater by means of electrolysis in 1886, but the apparatus he used, which had the side effect of producing sodium hypochlorite, proved much more useful as a means of disinfection, and was widely touted for that purpose in the 1890s. The principle is still used in chlorinating swimming pools.
19 Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) worked briefly for Thomas Edison, whose main rival he was widely considered to be, and George Westinghouse after emigrating to the U.S.A. The experiments with fluorescent light that he carried out in the 1890s, building on discoveries made in France by Alexandre Becquerel, were widely publicized, but did not lead to any commercially viable product.
20 There is an untranslatable pun here in Vésigout’s argot. The “eye” in question would be a “slate” in English slang or a “tab” in American.
21 An untranslatable pun has been omitted here, which links “piquer” (to prick, or inject, although it has numerous other implications, including “to steal” and “to irritate”) to “piquer le nez” (to get drunk, equivalent of English expressions along the lines of “to get off one’s face”). The chapter takes advantage of other ambiguities to make further puns.
22 I have retained this item of argot as printed; it is presumably a corruption of “eau d’oeuf” [egg-water], the “toddy” being egg-nog.
23 Either the author is joking or his research has gone awry; it is, of course, the pineal “gland” and not the pituitary that was being touted in the era when the story was written as a vestigial or undeveloped “third eye,” as featured in the similarly implausible operation attempted by the reclusive scientist in Jules Clarétie’s L’Obession (1908; tr. as Obsession).
24 The reference is to a sensational murder committed at number 3 Rue Tronson-Ducoudray in 1890 by Gabrielle Bompard and Michel Eyraud, who strangled a court usher, Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé, and disposed of the body in a trunk, the identification of which was an early triumph of scientific detection.
25 The reference to this improvisation—psychotritie in the original—as “limpid” is probably a joke. If the term is derived from Greek roots, it presumably refers to a tripartite division or classification of mental phenomena. An intellectual of Saint-Denis’ stature would surely not have combined Greek and Latin roots, so the second element cannot refer to the analytical process of trituration, even though a less scholarly person might think that the term might make more sense if it did.
26 Charles Richet (1850-1935) was a physiologist who eventually won a Nobel Prize for his work on anaphylaxis, but was also a litterateur, a pioneer of heavier-than-air aviation and an ardent student of psychic phenomena. He co-founded the journal Annales des Sciences Psychiques in 1891 with the physician Xavier Dariex, who published a book on telepathy in the same year.
27 Although Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice had recently married Nicholas Longworth III when the story was written, she did not, in fact, have a child until 1925.
28 Armand Fallières was President of the Republic from 1906-13.
29 The financier John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan (1837-1913)
30 The Savoyard political philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) was one of the fiercest critics of the French Revolution, arguing that any attempt to justify government on rational grounds is bound to fail, and that any authority that is not absolute and unquestionable is bound to dissolve into violence and chaos. The only possible salvation for Europe, in his opinion, lay in divine authority channelled through the Pope.
31 When Pope Pius VII was detained at Fontainebleau by Napoléon in 1812, he is rumoured by some accounts to have replied to Napoléon’s account of his reasons by muttering to himself the single word “Comediante!” [Clown]. Some accounts expanded the remark to “Comediante! Tragediante!” (or the other way around) while others shifted the remark to 1813 and slightly different circumstances. All the versions are probably apocryphal.
32 Prince Henry [or Heinr
ich] of Prussia (1862-1929), Wilhelm II’s younger brother, had a long career in the Navy. From 1906-9 he was in command of the High Seas Fleet.
33 Admiral George Dewey (1837-1917) was no longer on active service in 1908, but was still famous for his victory in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.
34 Claude-Adrien Nonotte, or Nonnotte (1711-1793) wrote several books, of which by far the most famous was Les Erreurs de Voltaire (1762; revised and expanded 1766).
35 The designation Homo priscus was first adapted in application to fossil humans in 1888 with regard to remains found in Chancelade in France, but Sageret would also have known that it had earlier been used by Catullus and Virgil to refer, satirically, to old-fashioned individuals of their own species, that being its literal meaning. His conscientious avoidance of the designation sapiens is, of course, key to his argument.
36 Hugo de Vries (1848-1935), the pioneer of mutation theory, which he developed in the course of modifying the theory of pangenesis—the hypothetical mechanism of heredity developed by Charles Darwin. His notion of the importance of sudden gross transformations is now considered discredited, although it continued to fuel the imagination of writers of speculative fiction to a far greater degree than the more modest gradualist conception.
37 Author’s note: “The 23rd day of the 7th month of the 211th year of the 2nd cycle.”
38 Anthea [blossom] was an epithet of the Greek goddess Hera.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
105 Adolphe Ahaiza. Cybele
102 Alphonse Allais. The Adventures of Captain Cap
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
118 Henri Austruy. The Eupantophone
119 Henri Austry. The Petitpaon Era
120 Henri Austry. The Olotelepan
130 Barillet-Lagargousse. The Final War
103 S. Henry Berthoud. Martyrs of Science
23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
121 Richard Bessière. The Masters of Silence
26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
06 Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
92 Louis Boussenard. Monsieur Synthesis
39 Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
89. Alphonse Brown. The Conquest of the Air
98. Emile Calvet. In A Thousand Years
40 Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
81 Félicien Champsaur. Ouha, King of the Apes
91. Félicien Champsaur. The Pharaoh’s Wife
03 Didier de Chousy. Ignis
97 Michel Corday. The Eternal Flame
113 André Couvreur. The Necessary Evil
114 André Couvreur. Caresco, Superman
115 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 1)
116 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)
117 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3)
67 Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey
17 C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
05 Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
68 Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men
125 Charles Dodeman. The Silent Bomb
49 Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid;
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Thieves of Silence
10 Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself
08 Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus
01 Henri Falk. The Age of Lead
51 Charles de Fieux. Lamékis]
108 Louis Forest. Someone Is Stealing Children In Paris
31 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega
70 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega & The Shadowmen
112 H. Gayar. The Marvelous Adventures of Serge Myrandhal on Mars
88 Judith Gautier. Isoline and the Serpent-Flower
57 Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality
24 Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods
131 Eugene Hennebert. The Enchanted City
107 Jules Janin. The Magnetized Corpse
29 Michel Jeury. Chronolysis
55 Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence
30 Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye
90 Fernand Kolney. Love in 5000 Years
87 Louis-Guillaume de La Follie. The Unpretentious Philosopher
101 Jean de La Hire. The Fiery Wheel
50 André Laurie. Spiridon
52 Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait
82 Alain Le Drimeur. The Future City
27-28 Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)
07 Jules Lermina. Mysteryville
25 Jules Lermina. Panic in Paris
32 Jules Lermina. The Secret of Zippelius
66 Jules Lermina. To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers
127 Jules Lermina. The Battle of Strasbourg
15 Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars
73 Gustave Le Rouge. The Plutocratic Plot
74 Gustave Le Rouge. The Transatlantic Threat
75 Gustave Le Rouge. The Psychic Spies
76 Gustave Le Rouge. The Victims Victorious
109-110-111 Gustave Le Rouge. The Mysterious Doctor Cornelius
96. André Lichtenberger. The Centaurs
99. André Lichtenberger. The Children of the Crab
72 Xavier Mauméjean. The League of Heroes
78 Joseph Méry. The Tower of Destiny
77 Hippolyte Mettais. The Year 5865
128 Hyppolite Mettais. Paris Before the Deluge
83 Louise Michel. The Human Microbes
84 Louise Michel. The New World
93. Tony Moilin. Paris in the Year 2000
11 José Moselli. Illa’s End
38 John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force
04 Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars
21 Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension
56 Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years
79 Pierre Pelot. The Child Who Walked On The Sky
85 Ernest Perochon. The Frenetic People
100 Edgar Quinet. Ahasuerus
123 Edgar Quinet. The Enchanter Merlin
60 Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors
33 Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril
34 Maurice Renard. Doctor Lerne
35 Maurice Renard. The Doctored Man
36 Maurice Renard. A Man Among the Microbes
37 Maurice Renard. The Master of Light
41 Jean Richepin. The Wing
12 Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries
62 Albert Robida. Chalet in the Sky
69 Albert Robida. The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul
95 Albert Robida. The Electric Life
46 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Givreuse Enigma
45 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Mysterious Force
43 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Navigators of Space
48 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Vamireh
44 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The World of the Variants
47 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Young Vampire
71 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Helgvor of the Blue River
24 Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World
132 Léonie Rouzade. The World Turned Upside Down
09 Han Ryner. The Superhumans
124 Han Ryner. The Human Ant
122 Pierre de Selenes. An Unknown World
106 Brian Stableford. The Conqueror of Death
20 Brian Stableford. The Germans on Venus
19 Brian Stableford. News from the Moon
63 Brian Stableford. The Supreme Progress
64 Brian Stableford. The World Above the World
65 Brian Stableford. Nemoville
80 Brian Stableford. Investigations of the Future
129 B
rian Stableford. Revolt of the Machines
42 Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory
13 Kurt Steiner. Ortog
18 Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror
58 C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec
104 Louis Ulbach. Prince Bonifacio
53 Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion (w/Octave Joncquel)
16 Théo Varlet. The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin)
59 Théo Varlet. Timeslip Troopers
86 Théo Varlet. The Golden Rock
94 Théo Varlet. The Castaways of Eros
54 Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid
IN THE SAME SERIES
News from the Moon
The Germans on Venus
The Supreme Progress
The World Above the World
Nemoville
Investigations of the Future
The Conqueror of Death
Edited by Peter Gabbani
English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2014 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2014 Adam Tredowski.
Visit our website at www.blackcoatpress.com
ISBN 978-1-61227-333-4. First Printing. October 2014. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.
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