Millions of years in the distant future, a posthuman scientist is attempting to build a time machine and tests it by sending a box with a hastily gathered batch of educational toys into the past. When…
"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque ..") is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in the November 1846 issue of "Godey's Lady's Book."
This engrossing tale presents as its central theme the ultimately unknowable – and untameable – essence of nature and the natural world. Told from several different perspectives, the story focuses on …
Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"…
Call Me Joe is a science fiction novella written by Poul Anderson and published in 1957. The plot involves an attempt to explore the surface of the planet Jupiter using remote-controlled artificial li…
The action takes place in the summer home of a wealthy "WASP" family on a resort island off the New England coast. In residence are a middle-aged but still attractive widow; her divorced daughter; and…
Part of the Penguin 60s series, issued to celebrate 60 years of Penguin books. This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 19…
Journalist, party girl, bookworm, artist, muse: by the time she’d hit thirty, Eve Babitz had played all of these roles. Immortalized as the nude beauty facing down Duchamp and as one of Ed Ruscha’s Fi…
The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's…
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, nat…
