The dull veil of ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly to roll away, and to lay bare a land of enchantments.
Classic Science Fiction Stories
Edited by Adam Roberts
Genre: Sci-Fi
About: A collection of short stories written by the likes of H. G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, H. P. Lovecraft et al. In these shorts, man travels to alien lands, invents impossible devices, overcomes mortality, and glimpses into spiritual realms...
My order, best to worst:
A Martian Odyssey - Stanley Weinbaum
The Star - H. G. Wells
Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
The Mortal Immortal - Mary Shelley
The Horror of the Heights - Arthur Conan Doyle
Micromegas - Voltaire
The Colour Out of Space - H. P. Lovecraft
The Door in the Wall - H. G. Wells
A Psychological Shipwreck - Ambrose Bierce
The Tachypomp - Edward Page Mitchell
The Diamond Lens - Fitz-James O'Brien
A Paradoxical Ode - James Clerk Maxwell
The Automaton Ear - Florence McLandburgh
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains - Edgar Allen Poe
The Good
There were some writers in this collection that I'd never heard of and I'm so glad to have come across now. Stanley Weinbaum's short was the most impressive to me, I absolutely loved the writing and it was not only memorable but so obviously influential. There are some other great shorts that balance humour with clever ideas such as Sultana's Dream or Micromegas. I also loved the creepiness of stories like The Colour Out of Space or the gripping atmosphere of The Star and The Horror of the Heights.
The Bad
Not all the shorts were enjoyable. It's hard to judge the writing style as a lot of them are of their time, but I found The Automaton Ear too similar to The Diamond Lens, and I struggled to connect with stories that were told so often in retrospect. Most of the stories were in fact told from a distant POV with the event having happened to someone else in the past, but while writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft were able to do this in a compelling way, I was completely disengaged with Edgar Allen Poe's tale.
The Somewhat Iffy
I'm not sure why Adam Roberts made an apology for H. P. Lovecraft's racism towards foreigners, but was silent on the two-page antisemitism displayed in Fitz-James O'Brien's story. Personally, I can look past dodgy descriptions when they're written in a time where society had a different outlook and manners of expressions, but I didn't understand why an editor note cropped up for one story and not the other.
Overall
Some really fantastic stories in this collection, some more memorable than others, though they all quite clearly had an influence on the genre. There's imagination, originality and daring in each one of these stories.
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