French Tales of the Red Planet (Volume 1)

The French have always had a strong affinity for interplanetary fiction since Cyrano de Bergerac released his History of the States and Empires of the Moon in 1657. But none of the celewstial bodies have attracted more attention than the planet Mars. We have gathered in this thematic collection five remarkable stories, plus a full-length novel from 1908 by H. Gayar devoted to the exploration of Mars and its inhabitants. These range fromas early as 1766, when Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert used a genie to take her heroes to Mars; to 1802 ,when Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne's superpowered hero Multipliandre stopped on the Red Planet during is exploration of the cosmos; and to 1889 when Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny's ambitious Franco-Russian space travelers used a fragment of Mercury torn away by a comet, to reach our Fourth Planet. These stories are all unique and highly original and provide exemplars of the rich tradition of fantastic voyages, in the broad spectrum of French fantastic literature. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction by J.-M. & Randy Lofficier Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert: The Voyages of Lord Seaton to the Seven Planets (1766) (excerpt) Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne: Posthumous Correspondence (1802) (excerpt) X.B. Saintine: Astronomical Journeys (1864) Guy de Maupassant: Martian Mankind (1887) Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny: The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (1889) (excerpt) H. Gayar: The Marvelous Adventures of Serge Myrandhal on Mars (1906)