‘The Cone’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), first published in Unicorn magazine on 18 September 1895. The story is one of Wells’s few works of fiction to be set in the Potteries in Staffordshire, England: a part of the country in which he lived for a short while. It’s also an early work, written in 1888 when Wells was only in his early twenties.
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‘The Plattner Story’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), whom Brian Aldiss dubbed ‘the Shakespeare of science fiction’. This story demonstrates why. Originally published in the New Review in 1896, the story concerns a schoolteacher who accidentally projects himself into another world.
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‘Remember Sascha?’ is a short story by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), included in his 1996 collection Quicker Than the Eye. The story hasn’t attracted much in the way of critical commentary, either in academic studies or analyses of Bradbury’s work or more widely in the blogosphere, so this review is a small attempt to remedy that. First, to summarise this charming little story though.
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The most successful and satisfying period of H. G. Wells’s long writing career ran from around 1894 – something of an annus mirabilis for him and the short story – until around 1904, when The Food of the Gods appeared. But there are some gems to be found after 1904, including novels such as In the Days of the Comet, The War in the Air,and The World Set Free, and there are some fine later stories.
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‘The Story of the Late Mr Elvesham’ was first published in May 1896 in the Idler magazine. It’s one of the best stories of H. G. Wells (1866-1946), who left behind dozens of classic short tales which laid the foundations for modern science fiction.
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‘The Land Ironclads’ is one of the most prophetic short stories by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), a writer who made more than his fair share of accurate prophecies. First published in Strand magazine in December 1903, the story anticipated the invention of the tank in modern warfare some thirteen years before the first tanks were deployed.
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‘Motel Architecture’ is not one of the best-known short stories of the British author J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), but it’s one of his most prescient. And this is an author who anticipated everything from Ronald Reagan becoming US President (in the late 1960s) to videocalls and virtual socialising via a TV/computer screen (see his ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ for the latter).
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‘The Crystal Egg’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), first published in the New Review in 1897. The story might be regarded as a precursor to Wells’s novel, The War of the Worlds: the ‘crystal egg’ of the story’s title turns out to be a communication device Martians have left on earth.
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The British author H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific writer of novels, scientific romances, and non-fiction. His late work All Aboard for Ararat, which was published in 1940 against the backdrop of world war, is not one of his most celebrated books, but it’s an interesting example of ‘late Wells’ and a fun update on the Noah story from the Old Testament.
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Of all of the short stories written by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), ‘In the Avu Observatory’ is one of the most genuinely frightening. In this story, Wells’s writing is sublime, and the way he slowly builds suspense as a mysterious monstrous creature attacks the scientist manning an observatory in Borneo serves as a masterclass in how to write a ‘monster tale’ such as this.
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Verde Omark's Classic Fantasy Stories 