Showing results by narrator "Rayner Bourton" in All Categories

Out for a walk in London one day, Gip and his father happen upon a magic shop. At Gip's urging, the two go in - and things grow more and more curious by the minute. Counters, store fixtures, and mirrors seem to move around the room, and the shopkeeper is most mysterious of all. Gip is thrilled by all he sees, and his father is at first amused, but when things become stranger and sinister father is no longer sure where reality ends and illusion begins.

"The Empire of the Ants" is a disturbing tale about a new species of giant ants in South America which have evolved to use tools and weapons, wear clothes, communicate and organize themselves as a deadly fighting machine. And their chosen enemy is mankind...

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT: He sits not a dozen yards away. If I glance over my shoulder I can see him. And if I catch his eye-and usually I catch his eye - it meets me with an expression.

"A Dream of Armageddon" is a short story by H. G. Wells which was first published in 1901 in the British weekly magazine Black and White. The story opens aboard a train, when an unwell-looking man strikes up a conversation with the narrator when he sees him reading a book about dreams. The white-faced man says that he has little time for dream analysis because, he says, his dreams are killing him.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction". JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD: "It isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "But it's happened to me. Among other things." I intimated my sense of his condescension.

The New Accelerator features a fascinating depiction of the invention of what sounds a lot like an amphetamine (though technically they had already been invented a dozen years earlier). It will also remind Star Trek fans of the episode called Wink of an Eye.

Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.

The eight stories here show Wells in various moods and foreshadow his celebrity. These are uncanny tales, resonating strangely, despite arising from ordinary thoughts, interactions, and memories. Wells shows just how fantastic the everyday can be, if one only pauses to reflect on missed chances, suggestions of what might have been, bleak premonitions of blessed futures whose utopian promise is destroyed by new forms of war.

'The Country of the Blind' is the strange story of a mountain guide who accidently falls off a cliff ledge in the Andes. He survives the fall unhurt, and finds himself in a remote valley where a tribe lives completely cut off from the rest of the world. A hereditary illness has meant that for 15 generations all the members of the tribe have been born blind. As a result, they now have a highly evolved sense of hearing, scent and touch. 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,' thinks the mountaineer.

This story talks about social class at universities in the late 1800s and it also looks at the idea of scholarships. The main character is the son of a cobbler and he's at university on a scholarship, unlike the other students who are from wealthy families who are able to pay for their education.

Mr. Britling Sees It Through is H.G. Wells's "masterpiece of the wartime experience in south eastern England." The novel was published in September 1916. Mr. Britling Sees It Through tells the story of a renowned writer, Mr. Britling, a protagonist who is quite evidently an alter ego of the author. The garrulous, easy-going Mr. Britling lives with family and friends in the fictional village of Matching's Easy, located in the county of Essex, northeast of London. The novel is divided into three parts.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. MATCHING'S EASY AT WAR: On that eventful night of the first shots and the first deaths Mr. Britling did not sleep until daylight had come. He sat writing at this pamphlet of his, which was to hail the last explosion and the ending of war.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. MATCHING'S EASY AT EASE: It was the sixth day of Mr. Direck's first visit to England, and he was at his acutest perception of differences. He found England in every way gratifying and satisfactory, and more of a contrast with things American than he had ever dared to hope.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original, adapted for audio. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

"The Star" is an 1897 apocalyptic short story by H.G. Wells. In January (about 1900, presumably), the people of Earth awaken to the news that a strange luminous object has erupted, into the Solar System, after disturbing the normal orbit of the planet Neptune. The object is a celestial body whose luminosity is distinguishable on the sky about the constellation of Leo.

"The Crystal Egg" is a science fiction short story written by H. G. Wells in 1897. The story tells of a shop owner, named Mr. Cave, who finds a strange crystal egg that serves as a window into the planet Mars. The story was written the same year in which Wells was serializing "The War of the Worlds" in Pearson's Magazine, a year before it was published as a novel. Because of the vaguely similar descriptions of the Martians and their machines, "The Crystal Egg" is often considered a precursor to "The War of the Worlds".

Written in the late 19th century by H. G. Wells and first published in The Butterfly (September 1899), (and collected in The Obliterated Man and Other Stories, [Dec 1925]), A Vision of Judgment is a short story in 9 sections. It portrays a Last Judgment in which God and the archangel Gabriel laugh at sinners and saints alike, embarrassing them until they flee "up the sleeve of God." After every human soul has taken shelter there, all of humanity, "enlightened" and "in new clean bodies," is given a second chance.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. The Red Room is the account of the terrifying nocturnal experiences of a young man who volunteers to spend a night in the haunted red room at Lorraine Castle.

"The Man Who Could Work Miracles" is a British fantasy-comedy short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1898 in The Illustrated London News. It carried the subtitle "A Pantoum in Prose." The story is an early example of Contemporary fantasy (not yet recognized, at the time, as a specific sub-genre). In common with later works falling within this definition, the story places a major fantasy premise (a wizard with enormous, virtually unlimited magic power) not in an exotic semi-Medieval setting but in the drab routine daily life of suburban London, very familiar to Wells himself.

The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents is a collection of fifteen fantasy and science fiction short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells between 1893 and 1895. It was first published by Methuen & Co. in 1895 and was Wells's first book of short stories. All of the stories had first been published in various weekly and monthly periodicals.