A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction

By Jack Fennell, Dorothy Macardle, Fitz-James O'Brien and George William Russell

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.


These fifteen darkly funny stories 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 O’Brien, Charlotte McManus and Cathal Ó Sándair.

A Brilliant Void as the fifth in Tramp Press’s Recovered Voice list.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tramp Press
• Release date: Nov 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999700898

Jack Fennell

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.