A Brilliant Void

An astronomer challenges an emperor. A hunter pursues the last dinosaur through a remote rainforest. A young Kerryman emigrates to the Moon to seek his fortune. The fifteen darkly funny stories in this book illuminate a side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the winds of change came rushing in Ireland s direction. Science and technology would transform everything: life, love, death, crime, war, and even history itself.

Edited and introduced by Jack Fennell, this collection of lesser-known works of classic Irish science fiction includes stories by Frances Power Cobbe, Fitz-James OBrien, Charlotte McManus and Cathal O Sandair.

About the Author

Jack Fennell is a writer, editor, translator and researcher whose academic publications include pieces on science fiction, utopian and dystopian literature, monsters, Irish literature, and the legal philosophy of comic books. He is the author of Irish Science Fiction (2014), a contributing translator for The Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (2013), and a former Visiting Fellow at the Moore Institute in NUI Galway. He lives in Limerick.