Jules Lermina was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

. He began his career as a journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 in 1859. He was arrested for his socialist political opinions, and received Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

's support.

He published a number of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

-inspired collections, Histoires Incroyables [Incredible Tales] (1885), Nouvelles Histoires Incroyables [New Incredible Tales] (1888) and a short novel, L'Élixir de Vie [The Elixir Of Life] (1890) (translated by Brian Stableford

Brian Stableford

Brian Michael Stableford is a British science fiction writer who has published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published as by Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford...

 and included in Panic in Paris). Le Secret des Zippelius [The Secret Of The Zippelius] (1893) (translated by Brian Stableford as The Secret of Zippelius (2011) ISBN 978-1-935558-88-0) featured the controlled disintegration of water. His two-volume La Bataille de Strasbourg [The Battle Of Strasbourg] (1895) was one of the first novels on the theme of the yellow peril

Yellow Peril

Yellow Peril was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.The term...

.

In L'Effrayante Aventure [Panic in Paris] (1910) (translated by Brian Stableford, ISBN 978-1-934543-83-2), Lermina used Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...

's vril-force to create a vril-powered flying machine. The novel also features the resurrection of prehistoric

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

 creatures frozen in ice in caverns under Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Mystère-Ville (1905) (translated by Brian Stableford as Mysteryville, ISBN 978-1-935558-27-9), written under the pseudonym of William Cobb, and illustrated by Albert Robida

Albert Robida

Albert Robida was an illustrator, etcher, lithographer, caricaturist, and novelist. He edited and published La Caricature magazine for 12 years. Through the 1880s he wrote an acclaimed trilogy of futuristic novels...

, was about Protestants who had fled France and created a secret, futuristic city in a hidden Chinese

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 valley.

Lermina also penned a proto-Tarzan

Tarzan

Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...

 novel, To-Ho le Tueur d'Or (1905) (translated by Georges T. Dodds as To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers ISBN 978-1-935558-34-7, two sequels to the popular classic The Count of Monte-Cristo: Le Fils de Monte-Cristo [The Son of Monte-Cristo] (1881), Le Trésor de Monte-Cristo [The Treasure of Monte-Cristo] (1885), and Les Mystères de New York [The Mysteries of New York] (1874), also written under the pseudonym of William Cobb. He also created the indomitable Toto Fouinard, whose adventures were serialized in 1908-09.

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