Snuggly Tales of the Afterlife

Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by

Brian Stableford

Images of a hypothetical afterlife experienced by the human psyche following the death of the body are among the purest products of the human imagination: a blank canvas on which creativity can be exercised with complete freedom.

In the present volume, edited and translated by Brian Stableford, thirteen exemplars of the genre are featured, several of which appear in English for the first time.

Including entries by such figures as Judith Gautier, Maurice Renard, and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, the stories included here, though not offering “answers” to questions that are, in fact, fundamentally unanswerable, do illustrate the fact, that just because a question is rationally unanswerable, it does not mean that there is no philosophical and psychological advantage to be gained by its contemplation. There is pleasure in that contemplation, but that pleasure is dependent on the ability to provide nourishing food for thought as well as piquant taste sensation.

Afterlife fantasies, composed with intelligence and esthetic verve—all the examples assembled here have both—are life-enhancing, even, and perhaps especially, when they are infernal rather than paradisal. After all, as the French put it, c’est la vie.

About the Editor
Brian Stableford has been writing for fifty years. His fiction includes include eleven novels and seven short story collections in a series of “tales of the biotech revolution”; a series of metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin, most recently Yesterday Never Dies (2012); and a series of supernatural mysteries set in an artist’s colony, most recently The Pool of Mnemosyne (2018). Recent novels independent of any series include Vampires of Atlantis (2016) and The Tangled Web of Time (2016). He also translates antique works from the French, with particular interests in the Symbolist and Decadent Movements, roman scientifique and the fantastique.

• Contents:

  Introduction, by Brian Stableford
  Immortality, by Edmond Haraucourt
  When We Have Passed On, by Frédéric Boutet
  The Second Life, by Charles Asselineau
  A Descent into Hell, by Judith Gautier
  The Magnetized Corpse, by Jules Janin
  Assured Survival, by Paul Vibert
  The Dead Man’s Dream, by Gaston Danville
  Doctor Z’s Autopsy, by Édouard Rod
  The Golden Clarion and the Ebony Olifant, by Catulle Mendès
  Love Among the Stars, by Camille Flammarion
  Minutes, by Maurice Renard
  The Phantom in the Rose, by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus
  In the Afterlife, by Andre Couvreur

Paperback, 320 pages. Release date: December 20, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-114-9
Price: US$22.00