Bøger udgivet af Black Coat Press

In the 40 stories assembled in this collection, originally published in 1901, journalist Paul Vibert explores such ground-breaking concepts as the artificial insemination of elephants with the seed of prehistoric mastodons found preserved in ice, the artificial production of microbe-sized humans, the existence of an underwater world inhabited by Ancient Jews, communication with Mars and other worlds via light signals, the power to look into the past, the electrical nature of the soul, the strange chemical lifeforms of the future, artificial Metempsychosis and the conquest of space.Paul Vibert (1861-1918) made several significant contributions to the early development of French speculative fiction at the end of the 19th century. Published mostly in newspapers, his works have only recently been rediscovered, and deserve much recognition alongside those of Alphonse Allais, Charles Cros, Alfred Jarry and Albert Robida.

In Albert Bleunard's Ever Smaller (1893), the first modern novel on the theme of the "Shrinking Man," a group of scientists are shrunken down, first to insect-size, to explore an ordinary garden, which becomes as perilous to them as an alien world; then, to microbe-size inside a drop of water and, finally, into a rose bush. The book also includes The Reluctant Spiritualist, an 1889 novella about a mysterious and seemingly blank canvas which when photographed reveal the face of a man. "Ever Smaller is a significant landmark in the history of scientific romance. Not only does it go where no writer had gone before, in extending its thought-experiments beyond those of Jean-Henri Fabre and S. Henry Berthoud, it does so boldly." Brian Stableford.

The deadly Madame Atomos is a brilliant but twisted Japanese scientist who is out to avenge herself against the United States for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where she lost her family. Opposing her are Smith Beffort of the FBI, Dr. Alan Soblen, and Yosho Akamatsu of the Japanese Secret Police.This classic French sci-fi thriller series from the 1960s is presented here in English for the first time in a nine-volume omnibus edition of which this is the second. After the defeat of her offensive against California, the sinister Madame Atomos unleashes an even deadlier threat -- the diabolical Miss Atomos!

The undisputed masterpiece of Gabriel de Lautrec (1867-1938), THE VENGEANCE OF THE OVAL PORTRAIT, which borrows its title from Edgar Allan Poe, is a collection of 28 stories at the crossroads of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Its singular inspiration owes as much to the author's predilection for dark humor, Grand Guignol and the mixing of genres, as it does to the influence of alcohol and hashish, which he used regularly.De Lautrec was a disciple of Alphonse Allais and the winner of the 1920 Humorists' Award. While he hid behind a smiling mask, his troubled personality is on display in this series of mysterious and thrilling tales. Reviewers have compared them variedly to Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells and Maurice Renard.

Long before George MacDonald and William Morris, Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy (1701-1784), a one-time friend of Voltaire, prolific author of popular and mildly scandalous potboilers (including the first sensational novel about the Man in the Iron Mask) and polemicist, penned one of the first and most extravagant "Extraordinary Voyages."Lamekis was first published in eight volumes in 1735-38, then reprinted by Charles-Georges-Thomas Garnier -- who listed it, arguably, as one of the first Hollow Earth novels -- in his ground-breaking fantasy imprint of Imaginary Voyages in 1788.This metafictional novel is an unparalleled work of kaleidoscopic imagination and multiple, exuberant narratives focusing on the life and times of Lamekis, the son of a High Priest of Ancient Egypt. It deals with themes of friendship, unrequited love, murderous jealousy, violent power struggles, the quest for immortality and the cosmogonic vision of the universe with competing gods and levels of reality. Its extravagant settings include a subterranean world inhabited by a race of intelligent worm men, and the celestial Island of the Sylphs, where beings can ascend to the Heavens, all depicted with their strange cultures and alien languages. The author himself is, at one point, dragged into the narrative where he is rebuked for his poetic license, given secret messages, witnesses his unfinished novel as a series of bas-reliefs, is shown the inside of his mind, is invited to be initiated into the mysteries of the Sylphs, has the final part of his novel written for him by an invisible force, and falls foul of the royal censor.Michael Shreve is a writer and translator currently living in Paris. His credits include translations of Jacques Barberi, John-Antoine Nau and Marcel Schwob.

A balloon ascent to the Heavens... A man with X-ray vision... A utopian metal city built on giant pylons above Paris... A sexless world in which women reproduce parthenogenetically and man is unknown... Is science insane? Unholy? See nine French authors of the 19th century grapple in a ground-breaking fashion with the future themes of science fiction.All the stories included in this volume predate the first translation into French of H.G. Wells. They are representative of a distinct tradition of romans scientifiques whose cardinal influences included astronomer Camille Flammarion and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. This edition includes a historical introduction and notes by sf scholar Brian Stableford.

The mad Marquis de Saint-Imier attempts to blackmail France and install a reign of mass terror through his control of atomic forces and electromagnetic waves. But against him stand the indomitable Professor Mazelier and his assistant Monsieur Gribal. Who will prevail in the ultimate battle against the Radio-Terror?Eugène Thébault's Radio-Terror (1929) had the honor of being one of the very few French works selected by Hugo Gernsback to be translated by none other than Fletcher Pratt, the well-known author of The Well of the Unicorn, and it was published in 1933 in Wonder Stories. This new edition includes Frank R. Paul's original illustrations and an introduction by SF scholar Jean-Marc Lofficier.

Published the same year as Jules Verne's classic From the Earth to the Moon and Henri de Parville's An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars, Achille Eyraud's Voyage to Venus (1865) was the first novel to describe an interplanetary rocket-powered spaceship. Eyraud supports his design with an elaborate (but ultimately flawed) pseudo-scientific argument and describes its cosmic voyage in a logical manner. Once on Venus, his protagonists discover a utopian society in which the sexes are equal and solar-powered robots toil in the fields.Voyage to Venus has often been mentioned in many histories of space travel and science fiction, although the difficulty of obtaining the original text until now meant that few have read it. This ground-breaking work is at last available in English in its first annotated translation by award-winning author Brian Stableford.

The mysterious Lord Ruthwen travels to Venice and strikes again, killing the beautiful Bettina and torturing her lover, Léonti, who swears to avenge her. He joins vampire hunters Aubrey and Nadoor Ali to search for the elusive monster...Cyprien Bérard's The Vampire Lord Ruthwen (1820) was the first sequel to continue John-William Polidori's 1819 ground-breaking story that had introduced the character of the handsome, but evil Vampire lord. Also drawing upon The Thousand and One Nights for inspiration, Bérard weaves stories of mystical Venice, Arabian Nights and Vampire legends into one exotic and suspenseful tale of revenge against the Undead. "A significant stepping-stone in the evolution of the modern image of the vampire, foreshadowing the other major thread of subsequent vampire fiction: the seductive female vampire." Brian Stableford.

Writer/artist Rick Veitch's career bridges the underground comix of the 1970s, mainstream DC and Vertigo Comics, and the self-publishing revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. In that extraordinary body of work, Brat Pack® remains a landmark, and Teen Angels & New Mutants is the first book-length, in-depth study of a creator and graphic novel worthy of the autopsy. En route, Teen Angels offers a crash-course on teen pop culture and superhero sidekick history, fresh analysis of Dr. Fredric Wertham's seminal books, ponders real-world "new mutants" like Michael Jackson, The Olsen Twins, and Justin Bieber, and charts the 1980s comicbook explosion and 1990s implosion--and more.

Jules Lermina (1839-1915), the author of Mysteryville, Panic in Paris and To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers, was one of the most interesting authors of French romans scientifiques in the latter part of the 19th century. This collection includes The Nail (1870), featuring a prodigious detective predating Sherlock Holmes by 20 years, the classic Burn This! (1888), a novella in the vein of Bulwer-Lytton and Talbot Mundy, in which a young Parisian gifted with superhuman mental powers encounters a mysterious Hindu secret society that has inherited the occult science of ancient Atlantis, and the eponymous novella (1893), in which young Conrad Zippelius receives a letter about a mysterious inheritance from a distant relative, one that comes with a secret that could destroy the world!

The father of science fiction illustration, and the author of The Clock of the Centuries and The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul, Albert Robida (1848-1926), was the most significant of all of Jules Verne's successors. In A Student in 1950 (1917), Robida returns to his fictional world of 1950 that he introduced in his classic The Twentieth Century (1883) and pens an exciting "Boy's Adventure," featuring the teenage students of the pseudo-futuristic School of Chambourcy, an amusing predecessor to Harry Potter's Hogwarts. In Chalet in the Sky (1925), Robida's last novel and literary "swan song," the author boldly steps forward into the far future when Man has emigrated to other worlds and he depicts the travels of a colorful cast of characters aboard their aerial villa above a bleak and exhausted Earth.