The Master of Light

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. This is 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. The Master of Light (1933), anticipating Bob Shaw's notorious "slow glass" concept, is the tales of a vendetta and a murder mystery solved thanks to luminite, a glass-like substance which slows down light as it passes through, and through which one can actually witness the past.