The Supreme Progress Read online

  68 Camille Flammarion’s Lumen, initially published in the late 1860s and continually reprinted and augmented until the end of the century, had familiarized writers and readers of French scientific romance with the idea that the finite velocity of light in an infinite universe implied that the history of the Earth could be viewed in its entirety from sufficiently distant points in space, by souls possessed of a prodigious acuity of vision and immune from any limitation of velocity—and would still be subject to such inspection long after the Earth had ceased to exist.

  69 There is an untranslatable double meaning here, the French word parabole signifying “parable” as well as “parabola” thus conferring an extra metaphorical dimension on the florid phrase.

  70 Roughly, “so many heads, so many ideas”—meaning that there are as many different ways of looking at things as there are people looking.

  71 Unlike many of Mullem’s linguistic improvisations, this is not a neologism; the term “photoscope” was applied to at least three different 19th century optical devices, more than one of which produced an image that could be, and sometimes was, called a “photoscopie” in French and a “photoscopy” in English.

  72 I have transcribed this improvisation directly from the French; its second part is derived from the same Latin root as “colony” and means “inhabitant,” so the whole signifies a native of the air, embracing birds, flying insects and other airborne life-forms.

  FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION

  Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm

  G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company

  Charles Asselineau. The Double Life

  Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse

  Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller

  Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future

  Alphonse Brown. City of Glass

  Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow

  Didier de Chousy. Ignis

  Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey

  C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)

  Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole

  Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men

  Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut

  J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid; The Thieves of Silence

  Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself

  Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus

  Henri Falk. The Age of Lead

  Charles de Fieux. Lamékis

  Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega

  Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality

  Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods

  Michel Jeury. Chronolysis

  Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence

  Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye

  André Laurie. Spiridon

  Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

  Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)

  Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars; The Dominion of the World (4 vols)

  Jules Lermina. Mysteryville; Panic in Paris; The Secret of Zippelius; To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers

  José Moselli. Illa’s End

  John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force

  Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars

  Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension

  Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years

  Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors

  Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril; Doctor Lerne; The Doctored Man; A Man Among the Microbes; The Master of Light

  Jean Richepin. The Wing

  Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries; Chalet in the Sky

  J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Givreuse Enigma; The Mysterious Force; The Navigators of Space; Vamireh; The World of the Variants; The Young Vampire

  Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World

  Han Ryner. The Superhumans

  Brian Stableford (anthologist) The Germans on Venus; News from the Moon; The Supreme Progress; The World Above the World; Nemoville

  Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory

  Kurt Steiner. Ortog

  Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror

  C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec

  Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion (w/Octave Joncquel). The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin) Timeslip Troopers

  Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid

  English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2011 by Brian Stableford.

  Cover illustration Copyright 2011 by Mike Hoffman.

  Visit our website at www.blackcoatpress.com

  ISBN 978-1-935558-82-8. First Printing. February 2011. 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.