I spent eighteen months after university working in Paris, and ever since then the City of Light and the fiction it inspires have been close to my heart. Paris has always been a magnet for artists, both celebrated and struggling. Perhaps most famous were the glitterati visitors of the early twentieth century: Hemingway, the Scott Fitzgeralds, Dalí and Picasso, Josephine Baker and Peggy Guggenheim, to name just a few. And it’s a place ripe with potential for the speculative, from the bohemian revolution—synonymous with absinthe and hallucinogenic visions—to the emergence of the Surrealists. No surprise, then, that this city has also inspired the imaginations of science fiction and fantasy writers.

[Read more]