"Forêt de Pont-Calleck dans le Morbihan. Par-dessus un étang, deux châteaux se font face : celui de Mathilde de Viremont et celui de Xavier de Cosquéric. Ces charmants voisins se boudent farouchement depuis une déconvenue sentimentale.Quadragénaire et célibataire endurcie, la marquise décide de perpétuer la lignée, tant qu’elle est encore capable de procréer. Elle s’assure le concours d’un géniteur présentant les dispositions nécessaires. Coup du sort, ce n’est pas un garçon qu’ell...

"Probably the greatest of all French-speaking science-fiction writers [after Jules Verne] . . . I was unprepared for the power and beauty." —Michael Dirda, The Washington PostTo the short list that includes Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as founding fathers of science fiction, the name of the Belgian writer J.-H. Rosny Aîné must be added. He was the first writer to conceive, and attempt to narrate, the workings of aliens and alternate life forms. His fascinatio...

Some years—1789, 1929, 1989—change the world suddenly. Or do they? In 2020, a pandemic converged with an economic collapse, inequalities exploded, and institutions weakened. Yet these crises sprang not from new risks but from known dangers. The world—like many patients—met 2020 with a host of preexisting conditions, which together tilted the odds toward disaster. Perhaps 2020 wasn’t the year the world changed; perhaps it was simply the moment the world finally understood its deadly diagnos...