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Loading... The Country of the Blind and Other Science-Fiction Storiesby H. G. Wells
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"In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Or is he? In H. G. Wells' acclaimed tale, a stranded mountaineer encounters an isolated society in which his apparent advantage proves less than valuable. This thought-provoking fable is accompanied by other short stories, including "The Star," a gripping tale about a massive celestial object hurtling toward the Earth, as well as "The New Accelerator," "The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes," "Under the Knife," and "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper." With the 1895 publication of his first novel, The Time Machine, Wells established himself as the foremost science-fiction writer of his era. This entertaining collection was selected and edited by Martin Gardner, who also provides an Afterword that offers insight into the liveliness and originality of Wells' imagination. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.61)
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Wikipedia in English
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The Star: A formerly-unknown planet from the outskirts of our solar system crashes into Neptune. The two planets fuse and go hurtling toward the Sun. Their trajectory will not send them anywhere near Earth, except that Jupiter is in the way. Jupiter's gravitational field pulls the "star" just far enough off its path to send it toward Earth.
The New Accelerator: A man invents a "medicine" that allows the user to speed up, to the point where the world seems frozen around them. He and his colleague take some and see what happens. The interesting part of this story, to me, was that although they intended that the medicine be used for time-saving and scholarly purposes, they fully admitted that it could be used to commit crimes, but they decided they would sell it anyway and that would be someone else's problem. That certainly wouldn't happen today!
The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes: A scientist has an accident with an electromagnet, and can only see a tropical beach and the ocean, though he is actually in a laboratory in London.
Under the Knife: A man worries about a surgery he is going to have, sure he is going to die. During the surgery he has an out-of-body experience.
The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper: On Nov 10, 1931, Mr. Brownlow accidentally gets a newspaper from Nov 10, 1971. He tells his friend about what he sees (and doesn't see) in it. This story was particularly excellent, as half the fun of reading Wells is his prophecies about the future. (