In the 1890s, a generation before Hugo Gernsback, Louis Figuier, editor of the French popular science magazine La Science Illustr e, made a concerted effort to define and delimit the genre of roman scientifique, using that term to head a series of feuilletons that ran in his magazine from 1888 to 1905. This is a new collection of eight French proto-science fiction stories taken from the pages of La Science Illustr e, translated and annotated by renowned...