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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.