The spider turned round and abruptly launched itself toward Camaret. He leapt sideways, and was thus able to evade the enemy’s attack. Paradou tried to do likewise, but he tripped over a stone and fell backwards. In an instant, the spider had hurled itself upon him, seized him in its mandibles and spun him around in mid-air. In Albert Bleunard’s Ever Smaller (1893), the first modern novel on the theme of the “Shrinking Man,” a group of scientists are shrunken down, first to insect-size, to explore an ordinary garden, which becomes as perilous to them as an alien world; then, to microbe-size inside a drop of water and, finally, into a rose bush. “Ever Smaller is a significant landmark in the history of scientific romance. Not only does it go where no writer had gone before, in extending its thought-experiments beyond those of Jean-Henri Fabre and S. Henry Berthoud, it does so boldly.” ~ Brian Stableford
| Alias Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan |
| Real Names/Alt Names Doctor Paradou (President) – Physician, Soleihas (Vice-President) – Optician, Camaret (Secretary) – Dentist, Al-Harik – Scientist, Thilda |
| Characteristics Hero, Adventurer, Doctor, Scientist, Merveilleux-scientifique, Miniature, Size Manipulator, Realism and Victorian Age, Public Domain |
| Creators/Key Contributors Albert Bleunard |
| First Appearance “Toujours plus petits” by Albert Bleunard serialized in La Science illustrée (1893) |
| First Publisher La Science illustrée |
| Appearance List “Toujours plus petits” by Albert Bleunard serialized in La Science illustrée (1893); Ever Smaller (2011) adapted/translated by Brian Stableford, Black Coat Press / Hollywood Comics; Toujours plus petits (2020, digital reissue, Gloubik Éditions). |
| Sample Read Albert Bleunard : Toujours plus petits [La bibliothèque de Gloubik] |
| Description The spider turned round and abruptly launched itself toward Camaret. He leapt sideways, and was thus able to evade the enemy’s attack. Paradou tried to do likewise, but he tripped over a stone and fell backwards. In an instant, the spider had hurled itself upon him, seized him in its mandibles and spun him around in mid-air. In Albert Bleunard’s Ever Smaller (1893), the first modern novel on the theme of the “Shrinking Man,” a group of scientists are shrunken down, first to insect-size, to explore an ordinary garden, which becomes as perilous to them as an alien world; then, to microbe-size inside a drop of water and, finally, into a rose bush. “Ever Smaller is a significant landmark in the history of scientific romance. Not only does it go where no writer had gone before, in extending its thought-experiments beyond those of Jean-Henri Fabre and S. Henry Berthoud, it does so boldly.” ~ Brian Stableford |
| Source Ever Smaller — Black Coat Press |













