{"product_id":"9781612274867","title":"The Mirror of Present Events","description":"The Mirror of Present Events (1790) is an irreverent political allegory in which a Syracusan beauty, following Archimedes' death, offers her hand in marriage to the inventor who can produce the most innovative homage to the great man's mechanical genius. A series of suitors comes forward, each offering a mechanical device ostensibly more marvelous than the last.\u003cp\u003eAlso included are an 1887collection of six futuristic stories by Jean Rameau featuring electric guns, automata and a striking vision of a future Paris in which people have become dependent on industrial pollution; The Immortal (1908) extrapolates the notion of immortality to a conclusion that might not be inevitable, but is no less symbolically dramatic; a hilarious 1910 feuilleton describing the career of an automaton racehorse; and L'Aerobagne 32 (1920), about a French engineer hired by a German company who discovers that its industrial operations are a cover for a rearmament scheme, and who refuses to surrender the formula for a new poison gas. He is then incarcerated in a vast airborne prison.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the fourteenth in a series of anthologies of exemplary texts in the evolution of the French genre of roman scientifique.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Coat Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031649599728,"sku":"9781612274867","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781612274867_p0.jpg?v=1763848205","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781612274867","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}