Thursday, September 11, 2008

Online: 14 classics + 2 new, all short fiction, at The Wondersmith

I've read may be a half dozen stories from the list - I'll say it's as good as any classics collection can get. Sometimes dark, sometimes not exactly entertaining - but famous & probably influential stories.

Legend: ff = flash fiction, ss = short story.
My rating is in brackets (for read stories).

  1. [ff] Hans Christian Andersen's "In a Thousand Years" (B); download: In far future, American tourists are able to fly in a fast steam-powered aircraft to take a whirlwind tour of Europe!
  2. [ss] Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Los Amigos Fiasco" (A); download; humor: A crazy technique of turning an ordinary morten into a superman!
  3. [ss] Rudyard Kipling's "With the Night Mail" (B); download; hard sf: Description of a flight of an airship from Europe to Americas. Sunstantially incomprehensible to modern reader.
  4. [novelette] Murray Leinster's "The Mad Planet" (A); download: I've been postponing a post on this story for nearly a fortnight because I'd misplaced the download link. No matter, this link will do as well. Should post next week.
  5. [ss] Jack London's "A Relic of the Pliocene" (B); download: A single virtually unarmed man hunts a woolly mammoth in North America - a mammoth that had survived to this date!
  6. [ff] Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" (A); download: A doomsday description as earth collides with a heavenly body.
  7. [ss] Saki's "Tobermory" (B); download; humor: It's not safe uplifting cats by teaching them to speak like humans!
  8. [ss] Mary Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal" (A); download; The Keepsake, 1834: Troubles of an immortal man among his mortal peers.
  9. [ss] Mark Twain's "From the London Times of 1904" (C); download: A somewhat muddled story that describes far-future remote-video-display device (very dated). Plus a bit of satire on judiciary near end. Note this linked version is an edited one - edited by the man who put it up online. Original unedited version is available at Project Gutenberg.
  10. [ss] Jules & Michel Verne's "In the Year 2889" (A); download: Shrewd guesses at technological possibilities of future.
  11. [ss] Voltaire's "Micromegas" (A); download; first contact: A commentory on political & religious issues of Voltair's time, & on human nature - by makings microscoping humans interact with hiant alien visitors.
  12. [ff] Voltaire's "Plato's Dream" (A); download; 1756: Even god is not perfect.
  13. [novelette] H G Wells' "A Dream of Armageddon" (B); download: A man, in his dreams, is living through a far future war!
  14. [ss] H G Wells' "The Star" (A); download: Description of doomsday triggered by the entry into Sol of an intersteller wanderer - a planet or a small star.
Plus two stories that aren't classics, but penned by the man behind The Wondersmith site:
  1. [ff] Blake Linton Wilfong's "The Good Witch"; download.
  2. [ff] Blake Linton Wilfong's "The Star (Centennial)"; download.

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