A collection of speculative stories imagining political futures, inventions, and social change.

Five extraordinary stories take you from bizarre scientific experiments and impossible disappearances to cosmic mysteries, ancient secrets, and an invention that could change the way we see the world.An Adventure of a Professional Corpse: The Artificial Honeymoon — H. Bedford-JonesAn unusual profession leads to an even more unusual assignment in this inventive tale from one of the most prolific writers of his era. What begins with a peculiar proposition qui...

Scientists are only interested in facts. Short story writers are only interested in fiction and how it can change one set of circumstances to another. Experiments in words may be common to both but when the scientist is our protagonist the journey can suddenly become quite disturbing.Join H P Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Nathaniel Hawthorne and many others as they put scientists into the driving seat of stories that often have surprising outcomes.1 - Stories with The Scie...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

Science has brought us many benefits for our health, our understanding, and our quality of life in all sorts of positive ways. We are all the better for it. But there is also a darker side when science reaches into the shadows. It claims that a fuller knowledge would benefit everyone, it must investigate. But, let’s be honest, some in science have lost their true calling and their ideas and notions come from these darker impulses. Their thoughts become muddled, their path more for themselv...

To know the future is perhaps the most fabled of wishes.In this volume we present a roll-call of classic authors including H P Lovecraft, H G Wells, Mary Shelley, Lewis Carroll, Jack London and many others who short story by short story establish much of what today is science fact. From space travel, the Internet, robots and cyborgs to voice control, organ transplants, mobile phones, these are just a few of the amazing and bewildering predictions that together bring a unique yet in...

Science is based on fact. Of course, it might take a huge leap of faith or imagination to even think that something can be proven or invented with experiments in search of the presumed end result.In this volume our trusted band of authors write fervently in pursuit of something that just needs proving with a small, very simple, experiment or two. What could possibly go wrong?1 - Stories About Experiments Gone Wrong - An Introduction2 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 1...

In this series we turn the pages of classic short stories to put together the literary building blocks of how a particular genre or theme began, how it built its foundations to become the well-loved and well-worn genre that it is today.Do authors have the same ideas at more or less the same time? Or can they sniff out an opportunity as to which way the tastes of an audience are moving.Success undoubtedly builds success and in literary terms we can more politely say that imi...

Vintage Sci-Fi 19 - 19 Science Fiction Short Stories from Philip K. Dick, H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack London, Theodore Sturgeon and moreThe Father Thing by Philip K. DickThe Crystal Egg by H. G. WellsMicrocosmic God by Theodore SturgeonEight Million Dollars From Mars! by Winston MarksLake of Fire by Frank Belknap LongThe Coming of the Ice by G. Peyton WertenbakerForever vy Robert SheckleyMan–Hun...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...