FRANCE AUTHOR · ASTRONOMY · PARAPSYCHOLOGY
Camille Flammarion
Also known as: Fulgence Marion (pseud.), Nicolas Camille Flammarion
BACK IN NINTH-GRADE BIOLOGY CLASS when Mr. Albert Tint announced that we would study the involuntary organs-the heart and lungs-he forgot to mention the mind.
— from Thunder and Lightning
Most acclaimed
Omega
Born in 1842, Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer who wrote many popular books about science and astronomy, together with a number of novels which we would now consider to be science fiction. He was a contemporary of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, though his works never achieved their level of popularity. Omega: The Last Days of the World is an English translation of Flammarion’s novel La Fin du Monde, published in 1893. The book’s fictional premise is the discovery of a comet on a collision course with the Earth in the 25th century. However, this is mostly a pretext on which Flammarion can hang his interesting scientific speculations about how the world will end, together with philosophical thoughts about war and religion. Much of the scientific description he uses in the book, while accurately representing the knowledge and thinking of his time, has today been superseded by modern discoveries. For example, we now know the source of the Sun’s energy to be nuclear fusion rather than being due to gravitational contraction and the constant infall of meteorites. When talking about the ills of society, however, Flammarion could well be talking about today’s world. For example, he excoriates the vast waste of society’s resources on war, and demonstrates how much more productive each nation’s economy would be without it. He also depicts the media of his future world as having been entirely taken over by commercial interests, publishing only what will excite the greatest number of readers rather than serving the public interest. Omega ranges over a vast period of time, from prehistory through to millions of years in the future when mankind has been reduced to the last two doomed individuals. Nevertheless, the book ends on a hopeful and inspiring note.
Haunted houses
Scare-master Robert San Souci serves up ten chilling tales about untraditional haunted houses: a mansion full of pirate treasure, a ghost trapped in a mysterious dollhouse, a boy whose vacation house comes complete with people-eating spiders, and many more. But beware because not all of the protagonists in these stories get out alive. From School Library Journal Gr 4-8–These 10 spooky stories include a classic Halloween scare: visitors get their admission fee of $25 back if they make it to the top floor of a haunted house–but can they? In another, the primary occupant of a dollhouse is a ghost of a child who needs help moving from one consciousness to another. San Souci also writes about an abandoned teahouse with ghosts, a Ouija board that foretells a confusing yet doomed future, and a mother's spirit who is searching for her missing son. The stories are well paced and satisfyingly startling. While some are better written than others, this book won't stay on the shelves for long. Murphy and Revoy's black-and-white illustrations heighten the fright factor, making San Souci's collection even more riveting.Patty Saldenberg, George Jackson Academy, New York City © Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From Booklist Featuring 10 tales of houses haunted by things that growl, smother, lurk, slither, or go bump in both night and day, San Souci’s latest collection has a scare factor somewhere between eerie and creepy. Some familiar summer-camp stories get multicultural augmentation, including “La Casa de las Muertas” and “Chimera House,” starring Little D from inner-city Detroit, while others involve a demon in the teahouse, spiders and dust creatures that take over the world, and a dollhouse looking for new “inhabitants.” For a nice change of pace, there are even a couple of ghost stories with happy endings. As often happens in a collection, the quality of the stories varies, but there are no clunkers, and the best are outright skin-pricklers. Offer this to those who already know San Souci’s work or who want follow-ups for Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, should it somehow stay on the shelf long enough to want company. Grades 4-6. --Cindy Welch