This is the twelfth in a series of anthologies of exemplary texts in the evolution of the French genre of roman scientifique. The eleven stories collected here were published between 1832 and 1932. They include three remarkable tales about automata and homonculi, including one in which the manufacture of an artificial human being is credited to the 13th century scholar Albertus Magnus.

Also included are The Uraniad (1844), a protest against Newton's theory of gravity, The Death of Paris (1892), an account of how Paris was destroyed by a new Ice Age, and The Nickel Man (1897) by military historian and journalist Georges Espitallier, in which an eccentric scientist uses galvanic technology to turn his body into a metal statue in an attempt to preserve it.