Useless hands

by Claude Farrère, Unknown Author

ABOUT THIS SERIES -- This is one volume in a large series of reprints of significant and obscure science fiction books from the 19th century into the mid 20th century, assembled by Arno Press/Ayers in the early 1970's. All of them are nicely-printed, offset facsimile reprints on the inside. On the outside, they have Arno's iconic and odd cover design for the lavender cloth with four ruled illustrations in squiggly white of robots, a space ship, and alien worlds. The series is simply titled Science Fiction. There are 49 fiction books and 13 nonfiction books. The fiction starts with early speculative fare such as Anonymous' 1875 In the Future or Grant's 1895 early time travel tale The British Barbarians. The nonfiction includes scholarly works such as the 1958 Into Other Space-Flight in Fiction From Lucian to Lewis and fandom compilations such as Bradley Day's 1963 The Supplemental Checklist of Fantastic Literature (apparently typed by hand!)

Genres: Dystopia, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

Claude Farrère, pseudonym of Frédéric-Charles Bargone, was a French author of novels set in such exotic locations as Istanbul, Saigon & Nagasaki. One of his novels, Les civilisés (The Civilized) won the 1st Prix Goncourt, for 1905. He was elected for a chair at the Académie Française on 3/26/35. Initially, however, he imitated his father, an infantry colonel who served in the French colonies: enlisting with the naval academy in 1894, he was made lieutenant in 1906 & was promoted to captain during 1918. He resigned in 1919 to concentrate on his writing career.

His works have become largely disfavoured, even by French readers. To date, fewer than five websites on the World Wide Web offer his works, and fewer than 100 websites give him even a cursory mention.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Predating, and regarded as higher quality than, Thea Von Harbou's Metropolis....