The Science of Love and Other Writings - Charles Cros

The Science of Love and Other Writings by Charles Cros, translated, with an introduction, by Doug Skinner / ISBN 9781939663955 / small 160-page paperback with flaps, published in 2024 by Wakefield Press *** The Science of Love and Other Writings brings together for the first time in English all the literary prose of Charles Cros. An indefinable polymath of fin-de-siécle Paris, Cros’s imagination had one foot in the literary currents of his time, and the other in the field of science. This amalgamation is fully demonstrated in this collection, which includes proto-science-fiction stories; his contributions to what was then the new form of the prose poem; a sober, if fantastical, scientific study on methods of communication with other planets; and the patent application written with his brother for a (never-built) notating keyboard. The literary imagination he was able to bring into the field of science was matched by the humorous scientific sobriety he introduced into his literature, wh