Description
Book SynopsisThe first English collection of Cros' writings: from treatises on interplanetary communication to a sardonic science of seduction
An indefinable polymath of fin de siècle Paris, Charles Cros made work that was simultaneously grounded in literature and science. The Science of Love and Other Writings brings together for the first time in English all of his literary prose. The collection includes proto-science-fiction stories; prose poems; an essay on methods of communication with other planets; and the patent application written with his brother for a (never-built) notating keyboard. The literary imagination Cros was able to bring into the field of science was matched by the humorous scientific sobriety he introduced into his literature, which he did nowhere so effectively as in the title piece, The Science of Love: depicting a young scientist's painstakingly executed seduction of a woman for the sake of scientific analysis. Also included are stories such
