The Dominion of the World: The Plutocratic Plot by Gustave Guitton and Gustave Le Rouge

The Dominion of the World: The Plutocratic Plot
aka The Billionaire's Conspiracy
by Gustave Guitton and Gustave Le Rouge
1899, Brian Stableford translation 2012

An example of high concept, poor performance.  American billionaire William Boltyn, seeking higher tariffs on Europe, enlists the aid of other rich American industrialists to build an invincible army.  Among them is a spiritualist and a Thomas Edison stand-in Hattison.  Hattison works on high speed trains and submarines, and later volumes involve an army of mediums and robots.

So I'm told.  There's sweet jack all in this installment.  The actual story is a timid love story about the mild courtship of Hattison's son and Boltyn's daughter.  When that gets too intense, there's some light comic relief in the form of a drunken butler.  And to bring the piece to a climax, a love triangle.

Hattison junior decides to marry a Frenchwoman and be more Frenchy.  Hattison Sr. gets mad and threatens to kill him, the end.  On to part two, which I will not be reading.  There might be psychics and robots eventually, but I could not read another page of this stuff.

There's a little bit of science fiction in the way of trains and submarines slightly advanced for their time, but other than the love story, we've mostly got musings about the difference between the American and French characters.  I'm biased, of course, but the Americans didn't get painted as too villainous, as opposed to the English, who are duplicitous colonists.  Americans are greedy, practical, inventive, and independent, while the French like art and having other people cook for them.

I can be forgiven for thinking this would be entertaining - I read Le Rouge's The Vampires of Mars, which was a lot more fun.  I will give Doctor Cornelius a try - it sounds like it has a Dr. Mabuse vibe to it.

Frankenstein's Tower

Frankenstein's Tower
by Jean-Claude Carriere as Benoit Becker
originally 1957 Fleuve Noir
English translation 2016 Grey Tiger

Jean-Claude Carriere is a respected screenwriter and collaborator with Luis Bunel.  He also wrote a series of mediocre Frankenstein continuations.

Frankenstein's Tower is set in 1875.  A disgraced mesmerist turned hobo creeper named Vrollo reanimates and controls Frankenstein' Monster, called Gouroull here.  Gouroll snaps a couple necks and kidnaps the fair maiden Helen.  The creature overcomes Vrollo's influence and kills him, then moves on to menacing Helen.

The townsfolk can't get in the castle where Gourollo is holed up, so they enlist the aid of a Hindu snake charmer to send an army of poisonous snakes in after them.  Sure.

Helen escapes, Gourollo escapes, and we're left with almost 30 pages of epilogue and afterword of a 158 page book.  I wouldn't mind the short page length if it was filled with more monster and less French talkiness.  And if I hadn't paid as much as I had - these are really more suitable for $1.99 ebooks than $11 paperbacks.

I appreciate Frankenstein's monster being evil (or at least amoral) and murderous, as opposed to the sympathetic approach usually given in the 20th Century, but at least in this installment he doesn't get a lot of page time.  This version suffers from either a poor, direct translation, or the fact that the French use way too many words.  Read Donald Glut for a better version of the same concept.

Overpriced paperback from Amazon.