Often hailed as the best French science fiction writer of the early 20th
century, Maurice Renard coined the term "Scientific Marvel Fiction" to
pen a series of gripping, ground-breaking stories that owe as much to
Edgar Allan Poe as they do to H.-G. Wells. Until now, Renard was best
known to the English-speaking public for his thrice-filmed thriller, The
Hands of Orlac. The Blue Peril (1911), which many consider to be
Renard's masterpiece, features invisible alien creatures which live in
high Earth orbit and which, feeling threatened by man's incursion into
space, retaliate by fishing for men the way we capture fish, and
studying our species. It is the third of a series of five volumes,
translated and annotated by Brian Stableford, devoted to presenting the
classic works of this pioneering giant of French science fiction.