This classic tale by Lewis Carroll has delighted children for generations. Alice falls down a rabbit hole and encounters a wide variety of strange and wonderful creatures in all manner of bizarre situations. Join Alice as she journeys through Wonderland, trying to make sense of what she finds there. This version is read dramatically, with different readers voicing the different characters.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course, structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four spirits on Christmas Eve, and it changes his life forever.
John Carter is mysteriously conveyed to Mars, where he discovers two intelligent species continually embroiled in warfare. Although he is a prisoner of four-armed green men, his Civil War experience and Earth-trained musculature give him superior martial abilities, and he is treated with deference by this fierce race. Falling in love with a princess of red humanoids (two-armed but egg-bearing), he contrives a daring escape and later rescues the red men from the hostility of another nation of their own race. In this struggle he enlists the aid of his former captors, whom he gradually civilizes, teaching them first the practical advantages of kindness to their beasts of burden and then of casting aside centuries of communal living in favor of the nuclear family. At last he even starts them on the path to mastering the arts of friedship and diplomacy. When the failure of the atmosphere-generator threatens the planet's inhabitants with extinction, Carter's luck, memory, and sheer determination make possible the salvation of the planet, but Carter himself falls unconscious before he knows the success of his efforts. The novel ends with his sudden involuntary return to Earth.
Imagine a strange, tropical place that is almost inaccessible. Time appears to have stood still there. Species of animal and plant life not seen elsewhere on Earth, except in the fossil record, inhabit the place. The lakes heave with the shapes of huge grey bulks moving under the surface. The woods are places where chittering cries move about above your head, as powerful apes move swiftly in the canopy of leaves. Then, a tree splinters nearby, and a dinosaur steps out from his hiding place... and he's eyeing YOU.
Jurassic Park? Not quite. The Lost World was an inspiration for Jurassic Park; in fact, a character in J.P. has the same name as one of the chief characters in The Lost World. It also inspired King Kong. But this is the original! Four adventurers go off to find the place shown in a dead man's sketch book - they find a war between apes and Indians, prowling dinosaurs, a sparkly treasure hidden in the blue clay - they find the Lost World. And because of the treachery of a native guide, their means of escape is destroyed!
An author who means to end a story with some variation of “And they all lived happily ever after” had better deal before that point not just with evil, strife, and terror but also with loss, failure, sacrifice, and death—or the ending will not be credible. And since such negative experiences do not easily lead to happy endings, only the best story-tellers succeed. George MacDonald is one of these.
His protagonist, Anodos, discovers on the day he comes of age a path leading into an alternative reality, where a rite of passage awaits him: an entire lifetime in a land of marvels resembling childhood imaginings and medieval romances.
The forces motivating him during his adventure, aside from the curiosity that induces him to enter Fairy Land in the first place, are a yearning after the feminine ideal and a desire to accomplish something worthwhile. Other people’s kindness, love, wisdom, and high expectations support him, while malice, selfish exploitation, and tyranny challenge him. Nor are these hostile forces all purely external.
Rarely has an author explored so searchingly as MacDonald the soul of a faithful squire and a rejected lover—for this is what Anodos is, when all is said and done. None of the most famous beta males in literature—certainly not Vergil’s “faithful Achates,” not Cervantes’ unforgettable Sancho Panza, not even Homer’s Eumaios (“Oh! my swineherd!”)—is portrayed with the richness, depth, and multi-dimensionality of MacDonald’s visitor to Fairy Land. Just possibly Spenser’s Timias (Prince Arthur’s squire, whose tale is told in books 3 and 4 of The Faerie Queene) could be MacDonald’s model. Like Timias, Anodos accepts his supportive role with equanimity and even learns the value of unrequited love, and yet, also like Timias, he possesses courage, skill, and resolve. He also combats dark forces within himself, an effort that ultimately endows him with insight, surpassing his master’s, into the darkness that masks as holiness—to oppose which he gladly sacrifices his life. Before that moment he has learned the bittersweet joy of sacrifice when his heart's desire, whom his longing and effort have freed from durance vile, prefers the love of a greater man, but it is only death that can teach him the joy and the power of loving without need, of giving without thought of reciprocation.
And only that death which is self-abnegation can carry him across the threshold into manhood, which the future’s inevitable adversity and defeats can never tarnish.
In a rundown farmhouse near isolated, rural Dunwich, a bizarre family conjures and nurtures an evil entity from another realm, with the purpose of destroying the world and delivering it to ancient gods to rule, and only an aged university librarian can stop them. The Dunwich Horror was first published in 1929 in Weird Tales.
The Well at the World's End is thought to be one of the first examples of an entirely fictional fantasy world, and has greatly influenced later fantasy writers such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The book follows the travels of Ralph, a prince of a tiny country, as he disobeys his fathers wishes and runs away from home to adventure in the world, and seek out the fabled Well at World's End, said to grant eternal youth to those who drink from it.
For a genuine Conan tale, full of barbarian craftiness, magic, fierce fighting and his berserker strength, this meets every criteria and is one of the best. Conan was raiding with the Free Companions when they were trapped and slaughtered by the merciless Shah Amurath the great Lord of Akif. Conan is one of the very few who escape by hiding in the mud of the marshes like a beast living on raw snake and muskrat. Luck, which seems to have deserted him, smiles again and allows him the chance for revenge and he eagerly seizes it, destroying his enemy with fierce strokes. Barely escaping his soldiers with the slave girl Olivia, once a princess of Koth, they reach a deserted island that holds many enchantments and strange dangers. Then the pirates arrive and things become even bloodier.
"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is, arguably the earliest chronological story by Robert E. Howard in terms of Conan's life. The brief tale is set somewhere in frozen Nordheim, geographically situated north of Conan's homeland, Cimmeria. Conan is depicted by Howard as a youthful Cimmerian mercenary traveling among the golden-haired Aesir in a war party.
Shortly before the story begins, a hand-to-hand battle has occurred on an icy plain. Eighty men ("four score") have perished in bloody combat, and Conan alone survives the battlefield where Wulfhere's Aesir "reavers" fought the Vanir "wolves" of Bragi, a Vanir chieftain. Thus, the story opens.
Following this fierce battle against the red-haired Vanir, Conan the Cimmerian, lying exhausted on the corpse-strewn battlefield, is visited by a beautiful, condescending and semi-nude woman identifying herself as "Atali." Upon her bodice, she wears a transparent veil: a wisp of gossamer that was not spun by human distaff. The mere sight of her strange nakedness kindles Conan's lust and, when she repeatedly taunts him, he madly chases her for miles across the snows with the intent of raping her. The excitement continues but I won't ruin the story for you by saying more. Can Conan deal with this daughter of a frost-giant? And what when her daddy shows up? (from Wikipedia and Phil Chenevert)
The Metal Monster is an Abraham Merritt fantasy novel.
Dr. Goodwin is on a botanical expedition in the Himalayas. There he meets Dick Drake, the son of one of his old science acquaintances. They are witnesses of a strange aurora-like effect, but seemingly a deliberate one. As they go out to investigate, they meet Goodwin's old friends Martin and Ruth Ventnor, brother and sister scientists. The two are besieged by Persians as Darius III led when Alexander of Macedon conquered them more than two thousand years ago.
The group is saved by a magnificent woman they get to know as Norhala. She commands the power of lightning and controls strange metal animate Things, living, metallic, geometric forms; an entire city of sentient cubes, globes and tetrahedrons, capable of joining together and forming colossal shapes, and wielding death rays and other armaments of destruction.
They are led to a hidden valley occupied by what they name "The Metal Monster", a strange metal city occupied by the metal animate Things Norhala commands This city is governed by what they call the Metal Emperor, assisted by the Keeper of the Cones.
Ruth is slowly being converted by Norhala to become like her; her little sister. Martin, her brother, tries shooting the Metal Emperor, who retalliates with a ray blast, putting Martin in a comatose state.
Closed in between the Metal Monster and the Persians, it falls to Goodwin and Drake to find a way to escape their predicament.
Lord Greystoke, Tarzan of the Apes, is embroiled in thrilling adventures among the tiny, warlike Minunians.
THE STORY OF PETER PAN RETOLD FROM THE FAIRY PLAY BY SIR J.M. BARRIE BY DANIEL O'CONNOR. Basically, Daniel O'Connor took the story from the original play, with the approval of Barrie, and shortened it into a book with music and beautiful illustrations. This shorter book was published before Barrie wrote the longer novel Peter and Wendy using the same plot and characters.
"A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder" is the most popular of James De Mille's works. It was serialized posthumously in Harper's Weekly, and published in book form by Harper and Brothers of New York City in 1888. This satiric romance is the story of Adam More, a British sailor. Shipwrecked in Antarctica, he stumbles upon a tropical lost world of prehistoric animals, plants, and a cult of death-worshipping primitives. He also finds a highly developed human society which has reversed the values of Victorian society. Wealth is scorned and poverty revered; death and darkness are preferrable to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible. At the beginning of each year, the government imposes wealth (the burden of "reverse taxation") upon its unfortunate subjects as a form of punishment. A secondary plot about the four yachtsmen who find the manuscript forms a frame for the central narrative.
Somewhere on the Time Ellipse, Mike Kenscott became Adric of the Scarlet Tower, and the only way to return to his own identity was to find the Keep of the Dreamer, and loose the terrible Falcons of Narabedla. A classic novella by master science fiction writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, originally published in Other Worlds magazine in 1957.
This Marie Corelli novel falls in the realm of fantasy and science fiction with a steampunk element. The story centers around Morgana Royal, a powerful woman who invents an airship, and Roger Seaton, her love interest who has control of a destructive power. She explores her capacity to love, as well as his. Moreover, she questions whether she is of this world and this time, or some other realm altogether.
John Kendrick Bangs (May 27, 1862 – January 21, 1922) was an American author and satirist, and the creator of modern Bangasian Fantasy, the school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife. (Wikipedia)
Plot summary: J K Bangs has taken Alice from Lewis Carroll's “Alice in Wonderland” and lets her on a boring day travel with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat and the other of Carroll's familiar characters to Blunderland. The story is a well written Satire, a witty, humorous tale of adventure and city politics, a tale of Alice in a land where nothing is as it should be.
Lee Clavering, a young playwright falls in love with an Austrian countess, not noticing the adoring glances from the outgoing flapper, Janet. Unknown to the young lover, the object of his devotion is defying age with artifice in this controversial pseudo-science fiction romance.
First published in 1914, the King of Alsander is the only novel by James Elroy Flecker, best known as a poet, but also a noted scholar, linguist and diplomat. Flecker's love of learning, language and travel, and his keen satirical insight into politics are all in evidence in this phantasmagoric tale. As the author himself describes it: Here is a tale all romance - a tale such as only a Poet can write for you, O appreciative and generous Public - a tale of madmen, kings, scholars, grocers, consuls, and Jews: a tale with two heroines, both of an extreme and indescribable beauty: a tale of the South and of sunshine, wherein will be found disguises, mysteries, conspiracies, fights, at least one good whipping, and plenty of blood and love and absurdity: a very old sort of tale: a tale as joyously improbable as life itself.
Disagreeable old Miss Terry spends her Christmas Eve getting rid of toys from her childhood toy box. One by one she tosses them onto the sidewalk in front of her house, then secretly watches the little scenes that occur, which seem to confirm her belief that true Christmas spirit does not exist. Then the Angel from her childhood Christmas tree appears to show Miss Terry that she has not yet witnessed the final act of each of those little dramas …
[i]Living Age[/i] magazine in 1910 observed of [i]The Christmas Angel[/i], "Not since Charles Dickens laid down his pen forever has there been a prettier Christmas story written, one more full of the real spirit of Christmas or conveying a more seasonable lesson."
A tale of two people, and their search for answers to unknown questions. Adam and Robin find themselves inexplicably alone after an apparent natural cataclysm, and are compelled to learn how to survive, how to endure, but most importantly to themselves, how to enjoy, understand their new roles in life, and understand each other.
The story follows a Victorian scientist, who claims that he has invented a device that enables him to travel through time, and has visited the future. There, he finds the human species has “evolved” into two distinct forms. Above ground live the Eloi—gentle, fairy-like, childish creatures, whose existence appears to be free of struggle. However, another race of beings exists—the Morlocks, underground dwellers who, once subservient, now prey on the feeble, defenseless Eloi.
This Novella by Ayn Rand was first published in England in 1938. It takes place at some unspecified future date when mankind has entered another dark age characterized by irrationality, collectivism, and socialistic thinking and economics. Technological advancement is now carefully planned (when it is allowed to occur at all) and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the use of the word "I" is punishable by death).Rand, as a teenager living in Soviet Russia, initially conceived Anthem as a play. This is a novel upholding Rand's central principles of her philosophy and of her heroes: reason, values, volition, individualism.
The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is a fantasy novel by American writer Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It was one of the last Conan stories published before Howard's suicide although not the last to be written. The novel was first published in serial form in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1935 through 1936.
In the fifth book in the Barsoom series, Tara of Helium, daughter of John Carter, becomes lost in an unknown area of Mars when her single-seat flier is caught in a rare Martian hurricane. She is first captured by the bizarre and hideous Kaldanes, then the brutal Manatorians, where she is the prize in a tournament of Martian chess, jetan, that is played by live game pieces, and to the death!
Anatole France, in his satirical and allegorical fashion, weaves a tale of fantasy which finds a mischievous guardian angel stealing books from his earthly charge, who happens to be an archbishop in possession of a plethora of literature, mostly theological in nature. After voracious reading and then becoming a "fallen" angel, he decides to search for and recruit other "fallen" angels who devise a plan to attempt an overthrow of the rule which had set their fate, realizing that revolt is necessary and inevitable. What follows is preparation for a battle to revenge what has befallen them (and mankind itself). But surprises find their way into the plans, as well as the question that if they win the war, what will change?
David Innes and his captive, a member of the reptilian Mahar master race of the interior world of Pellucidar, return from the surface world in the Iron Mole invented by his friend and companion in adventure Abner Perry.
Emerging in Pellucidar at an unknown location, David frees his captive. He names the place Greenwich and uses the technology he has brought to begin the systematic exploration and mapping of the unknown land while searching for his lost companions, Abner, Ghak, and Dian the Beautiful. He soon encounters and befriends a new ally, Ja the Mezop of the island country of Anoroc; later he finds Abner, from whom he learns that in his absence the human revolt against the Mahars has not been going well. In a parlay with the Mahars David bargains for information of his love Dian and his enemy Hooja the Sly One, which his foes agree to supply in return for the book containing the Great Secret of Mahar reproduction that David stole and hid in the previous novel. David undertakes to recover it, only to find that Hooja has been there before him and claimed Dian as his own reward of the Mahars!
This gore drenched story finds Eric Stark, the barely civilized warrior raised on Mercury struggling to bring a dying Martian friend back to his home city in the North of Mars before he passes away. Unfortunately his friend does die on the way and lays a most unwanted last request on Stark before the end; to bring a precious stolen talisman back to the city. The journey there introduces the intimidating Black Amazon of Mars. "Grimly Eric John Stark slogged toward that ancient Martian city—with every step he cursed the talisman of Ban Cruach that flamed in his blood-stained belt. Behind him screamed the hordes of Ciaran, hungering for that magic jewel—ahead lay the dread abode of the Ice Creatures—at his side stalked the whispering spectre of Ban Cruach, urging him on to a battle Stark knew he must lose! (from the story blurb and the reader)
In his final adventure on Mars, Eric John Stark acquires a relic of an ancient Martian hero, a gem or lens which is believed to be the key to the strength of Kushat, the city that guards the Gates of Death in the frozen north. A brief inspection of the artifact plunges Stark into the mind of its creator, where he sees, through those long-dead eyes, the unutterably ancient, beautiful, and evil Martian race who are imprisoned in the ice beyond the Gates of Death, alive and plotting to reclaim Mars for themselves and to extend the ice, their world, around the whole planet. Falling into the hands of roving outlaws, Stark survives torture and overcomes his cruel torturer, thereby winning the respect of the leader, who wears black clothing and a fearful mask. After a daring escape, Stark makes his way to Kushat, with the double intent of restoring the artifact and warning the city that the outlaw band intends to attack it. He finds both tasks difficult but at length succeeds in persuading the city officials of the danger. The battle which ensues costs both sides dearly, and it also precipitates the main action of the novel, for a citizen flees the falling city intent upon opening the Gates of Death in the hope that whatever lies beyond will overwhelm the invaders. Stark pursues him, still carrying the ancient amulet, and is himself pursued by the now unmasked, black-clad leader of the outlaw band. Finally three antagonists find themselves bound together in a struggle with the ancients for possession of the planet Mars. (This story was later expanded in book form under the title People of the Talisman 1964.)
From the classic science-fiction and fantasy author Fritz Leiber comes this intriguing tale of a green cat. From the author's introduction: "The world Phil Gish lived in was not a pretty one, and Phil didn't enjoy living in it. He was disillusioned, purposeless, hopeless, and haunted by the fear that a robot would take over his job. But then Phil was a timid person, not much given to adventure seeking. If he hadn't been so mild he might have found his kicks at All Amusements, the syndicated playground where anyone could find fun, providing he had the proper sadistic and otherwise aberrated elements in his personality. But Phil was good—and bored.And then one day a cat perched on his window—not an ordinary cat—a green cat. For the first time in years Phil was happy. He promptly named the cat Lucky because he somehow knew that as long as the cat stayed with him he'd feel fine. But Lucky didn't stay long. In a matter of minutes he had disappeared into All Amusements park. It was then that Phil became involved in a grotesque world, peopled with the most extraordinary personalities. Just what the cat is and its ultimate meaning is the secret of it all. You will be surprised."
When an atomic explosion destroys the battleship Alaska, Lt. Commander Frank Jacklin returns to consciousness in New York and is shocked to find himself in the body of Winnie Tompkins, a dissolute stock-broker. Unable to explain his real identity, Jacklin attempts to fit into Tompkins' way of life. Complications develop when Jacklin gets involved with Tompkins' wife, his red-haired mistress and his luscious secretary. Three too many women for Jacklin to handle. His foreknowledge of the Alaska sinking and other top secret matters plunges him into a mad world of intrigue and excitement in Washington—that place where anything can happen and does! Where is the real Tompkins is a mystery explained in the smashing climax.Completely delightful, wholly provocative, the Rat Race is a striking novel of the American Scene.
100 B.C.The Cimbrian hordes galloped across the dawn of history and clashed in screaming battle against the mighty Roman legions.Led by their chief, Boierik, and his son, Eodan, the hungry and homeless pagan tribes hurled back the Romans time after time in their desperate search for land. But for all the burning towns, the new-caught women weeping, the wine drunk, the gold lifted, the Cimbri did not find a home.And now it was over. At Vercellae the Roman armies shattered them completely. Only a few survived—and for them death would have been more merciful. Eodan, the proud young chieftain, had been caught and sold into slavery, his infant son murdered and his beautiful wife, Hwicca, taken as a concubine. But whips and slave chains could not break the spirit of this fiery pagan giant who fought, seduced and connived his way to a perilous freedom to rescue the woman he loved.
In this work of utopian science fiction from the Victorian era written by Two Women of the West, a moniker for Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Marchant. A man travels to Mars to discover an Utopian world which is parallel to the Earth in some ways, but strikingly different in some. The freedom of women is not of this world. It is especially intriguing coming from the imagination of these two American women in the 19th Century
Wilbur Hawkes wakes with no memory of the last seven months. He knows he's in danger, but he doesn’t know why. No sooner does he leave his apartment than it explodes in flames, and, to escape, he must run through New York, not knowing where to run, or who he is running from.With heat rays, disintegrating men, and exploding cats, how can this not involve aliens? What other explanation can there be?
The novel opens with Carl Foster, a recently qualified doctor, coming to London to try and make his fortune. He meets a famous tenor, Signor Alresca, who suffers a dreadful injury backstage and Foster tends to him. He thus meets the lead soprano, Rosetta Rosa, and falls hopelessly in love with her.
Alresca takes Foster under his wing and they travel to Alresca's home in Bruges. It is clear to Foster that Alresca has some strange obsession. Foster also notices a stranger who seems to be dogging his footsteps.
Things take an even more sinister turn when Alresca inexplicably dies. . .
The time is 1644 in Inverness Scotland. Kelpie, now a teenage girl, doesn't remember being kidnapped by Gypsies. They had kidnapped her at a very young age because her "Second Sight" that was indicated by her blue ringed eyes. Kelpie desperately wishes she were a witch and often wondered where she had come from. We follow Kelpie through a series of events that changes her life forever.
A collection of offbeat stories. Some are a bit out of the ordinary as suggested by the title story about a freshwater mermaid; some are not.
In the future, people will be fitted with clockwork devices in their heads which, among other things, allows them to travel through time. Well, it seems one of these devices has frizzed-out, and a Clockwork man appears in the middle of a cricket match in 1923. The Clockwork Man by E.V. Odle is believed to be the first instance of a human-machine cyborg appearing in literature.
Alfred Burton, a smooth-talking salesman, is having a perfectly ordinary day on the job when he stumbles across a strange plant in an old house. What he doesn't realize is that the fruit of the plant, when eaten, will change not merely the entire course of his life, but in fact his very self.
Satiric comedy from 1915 about a nouveau riche British family and their nanny who get whisked off to Maerchenland ('the land of Fairy Tales') one evening in a car drawn by storks. The matron of the family, a thorough snob, is crowned Queen of the country by mistake. She is quick to accept her new position and is determined to introduce British social niceties in her realm. And this really is the land of Fairy Tales, with gnomes, giants, a dragon, magic, a fairy godmother and more. Trouble quickly starts to brew as the royal couple and their son introduce things like capitalism and golf. When gradually a few people find out who should actually have been the new ruler, things get more and more complicated. A bit of romance is thrown into this mixture as well. You'll have to listen to find out whether everyone lives happily ever after.
In the preface and epilogue, the author won't let his audience forget the troubled times in the real world, in the heat of World War I.
"Guide a black galleon to the lost, fear-hauntedCitadel of the Xanthi wizards—into the very jaws of Doom? Corun, condemned pirate ofConahur, laughed. Aye, he'd do it, and gladly.It would mean a reprieve from the headsman's axe—a few more precious moments of lifeand love ... though his lover be a witch!" Publisher blurb
In 1623, Francis Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideas in New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where people were kind, knowledgeable, and civic-minded. Part of this new land was his perfect college, a vision for our modern research universities. Islands he had visited may have served as models for his ideas.
After John Carter's arrival, a boat of Green Martians on the River Iss are ambushed by the previously unknown Plant Men. The lone survivor is his friend Tars Tarkas, the Jeddak of Thark, who has taken the pilgrimage to the Valley Dor to find Carter. Having saved their own lives, Carter and Tars Tarkas discover that the Therns, a white-skinned race of self-proclaimed gods, have for eons deceived the Barsoomians elsewhere by disseminating that the pilgrimage to the Valley Dor is a journey to paradise. Most arrivals are killed by the beasts of Valley, and the survivors enslaved by Therns.
The Book of Wonder (1912) is an amazing collection of fourteen tales by one of the pioneers and masters of the fantasy genre Lord Dunsany. Strangeness and humor abound in these delightful stories that were influential to many writers including H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber among others.-Erik
"The Gods of Pegana" is the first book by Anglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, published on a commission basis in 1905... The book is a series of short stories linked by Dunsany's invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegana. It was followed by a further collection "Time and the Gods" and by some stories in "The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories".
A multitude of very short stories populated with things that lurk in the dark corners of human imagination. Wonderfully crafted and sometimes ending with an unexpected outcome, these stories are well rooted in mythology and speak of things beyond the thin veil of reality.
The Sun has gone out and the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, nearly eight miles high – the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a Circle of Energy, known as the "air clog", powered from a subterranean energy source called the "Earth Current". For millennia, vast living shapes—the Watchers—have waited in the darkness near the pyramid. It is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human.
To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse an ultimate destruction of the soul. As the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten Lesser Redoubt. First one expedition sets off to succor the inhabitants of the Lesser Redoubt, whose own Earth Current has been exhausted, only to meet with disaster. After that the narrator sets off alone into the darkness to find the girl he has made contact with, knowing now that she is the reincarnation of his past love.
H. P. Lovecraft describes the novel as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written". Clark Ashton Smith wrote of it that "In all literature, there are few works so sheerly remarkable, so purely creative, as The Night Land.
Conan the Barbarian finds himself lusting after and fighting alongside the toughest woman alive, Valeria The Red, a beautiful pirate who out pirates the best of them in her strength and ferocity. This is one of the strangest stories ever written by Robert E. Howard — the tale of a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird enclosed and long dead city now inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned. Listen and be amazed at Howard's inventive genius.
This is a satirical novel written by Edwin A. Abbott, first published in 1884. Abbott uses a two-dimensional world, with himself as the protagonist, known simply as "A Square", to deride the Victorian aristocracy and its hierarchies. But the book has retained its value throughout the years for its unique portrayal of a two-dimensional world, and how a Sphere introduces the Square to the incomprehensible possibility of a third dimension. Once the square fully understands the third dimension, he suggests to the Sphere that even a fourth, fifth, or sixth dimension could exist. But the Sphere sends the square back to his two-dimensional world, where he cannot convince anyone of the existence of a three dimensional world.
The fourth book of the Barsoom series, Thuvia, Maid of Mars takes up the story of Thuvia, now Princess of Ptarth, and Carthoris, son of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. Thuvia is betrothed to Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol in an arranged marriage. She spurns the advances of a suitor, Astok of Dusar, who then plots to abduct Thuvia, and frame Carthoris for the crime, igniting a war between Kaol, Ptarth and Helium.