Lumen (Early Classics Of Science Fiction) - Softcover

Flammarion, Camille

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819565687 ISBN 13: 9780819565686

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Lumen was first published by Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) in 1872 as part of the Stories of Infinity collection. Flammarion was a well-known French astronomer, writer and highly successful popularizer of science during the late 19th century.

This famous novel, written in the form of a philosophical dialogue, features a cosmic spirit named Lumen who reveals the scientific wonders of the celestial universe to Quaerens, a young seeker of knowledge. Within its pages, the author mixes empirical observations about the nature and speed of light with vivid speculations about such diverse subjects as reincarnation, time travel, the reversibility of history and the ecospheres of alien planets. Lumen is one of the first science fiction novels to include detailed descriptions of alien life forms and the first to imagine (30 years before Einstein's theory of relativity) the differences in perception that might result from traveling at velocities close to and beyond the speed of light.

This Wesleyan edition is the first English translation of the original French text in over a hundred years. The volume includes notes, appendices and a critical introduction.

About this title

From the Publisher:

6 x 9 trim.

From Publishers Weekly:

Initially published in 1872 and here translated for the first time into English, this French SF classic employs Plato's philosophical dialogue form to unite 19th-century science with boldly imaginative fictional narrative. A noted astronomer and science popularizer, Flammarion (1842-1925) speculates on the relative nature of space and time, anticipating by three decades Einstein's theory of relativity. That the author was also fascinated by psychic "research" comes through in the five lively "conversations" that comprise the text between Questor ("Seeker") and the recently dead Lumen ("Light"), whose soul roams the universe while instructing his avid pupil. Bolstered by Stableford's able introduction, voluminous notes and a comprehensive bibliography, this short novel survives the first two didactic and repetitive conversations to burst pyrotechnically into the sheerest poetry when Lumen describes the indescribable: sentient entities on unheard-of worlds linked by psychic bonds that draw souls into successive reincarnations across the abyss of intergalactic space and time. This early work illuminates the human aspiration to overcome mortality, occasionally reflecting a genuine spark of the divine, as when Lumen muses, "What voice is more eloquent than the silence of a starlit night?" (June) Forecast: Its appeal limited mainly to SF historians and Stableford completists, this book will have a healthy sales life only if it becomes part of the SF curriculum on college campuses.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0819565687
• ISBN 13: 9780819565686
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200
• Editor: Stableford Brian