Showing results by author "Edward Page Mitchell" in All Categories

Science fiction at its literate best with every story a little gem. Authors include Jack London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit. Each of their works is laden with talent, has purpose, and is rich and textured in this gloried niche of literature.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They 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 volume the Mad Scientist takes centre stage. Naturally the stories come in all shapes and sizes and in the pens of our classic authors the scientists more usually arrive as dark, twisted and evil as they go about their work illuminating humanity as only a mad scientist can.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of the American male author whose time has now come again.

An American vacationing in Europe learns the secret behind one man's meteoric rise as a statesman: a clockwork brain. Who will benefit from his artificial intellect and unerring conclusions, and at what cost? The season one finale of the spy drama Intelligence revealed this story to the be basis for their Project Clockwork.

A young mathematician wants to marry the lovely Abscissa Surd, but her father says he must first prove himself worthy. Professor Surd will only allow the protagonist to marry his daughter if he can either accomplish perpetual motion or faster-than-light travel. “The Tachypomp” is a short story for the mathematically-minded. Though first published anonymously in 1874, science-fiction scholar Sam Moskowitz rediscovered and republished it - along with Mitchell’s other forgotten work - in 1973, thus restoring him to his rightful place in contemporary sci-fi discourse.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

Edward Page Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine on 24th March 1852 into a wealthy family. When he was eight the family moved to a house on New York’s famed Fifth Avenue. The Tachypomp is a glorious mixture of a youth looking to impress his prospective father-in-law with a seemingly outlandish solution to a scientific problem.

In this volume our authors, including Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Winifred Holtby, Bernard Capes and many others bring forth creations and contraptions that are both amazing and abstract as well as diabolical and delightful.