N S Ford

Tag: Mary Shelley

  • Review of ‘Classic Science Fiction Stories’ edited by Adam Roberts

    Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library series, this volume presents science fiction from before the ‘golden age’ and is a very respectable selection, bookended by stories from the great H G Wells. I had previously read 4 stories in this collection but they are good ones so I didn’t mind re-reading. My favourite of those I hadn’t read before turned out to be Arthur Conan Doyle’s, which surprised me as I’ve never enjoyed his detective stories. There is a detailed introduction which discusses the history of early science fiction and each piece has a very short introduction too.

    I felt that Lovecraft’s story was kind of spoilt by a footnote from the editor which tells us that Lovecraft was a notorious racist. He was singled out, as two or three of the other stories contained racist references and were not given footnotes. Most authors of ‘classic’ works would have held views considered unacceptable today and if we are to continue enjoying these works, we need to separate the art from the artist. These authors lived a long time ago, those were the views they would have held, please allow us to enjoy their work.

    Here are the stories included in the book:

    ‘The Star’ by H G Wells is a stunning and terrifying story – one of his best – about a new star threatening to collide with the Earth.

    ‘A Martian Odyssey’ by Stanley Weinbaum is an adventurous and action-packed story of alien encounters on Mars.

    ‘The Diamond Lens’ by FitzJames O’Brien is a strange obsessive tale of microbiology and spiritualism, from an author I hadn’t heard of before.

    ‘Micromégas’ by Voltaire is a philosophical journey, which I appreciated rather than enjoyed.

    ‘The Mortal Immortal’ by Mary Shelley is a sorrowful story of alchemy and immortality with tones of her novel The Last Man.

    ‘A Tale of the Rugged Mountains’ by Edgar Allan Poe is a story of psychics and time travel, quite frightening as you’d expect from Poe.

    ‘The Automaton Ear’ by Florence McLandburgh is a very unusual and dark story of scientific obsession and mental illness, from another author I hadn’t heard of before.

    ‘The Tachypomp’ by Edward Page Mitchell is a mathematics themed story which I didn’t enjoy, although it does have an amusing tone.

    ‘The Colour Out of Space’ by H P Lovecraft is one of his most disturbing tales, although not one of my favourites, as it becomes repetitive towards the end.

    ‘To Hermann Stoffkraft, Ph.D., A Paradoxical Ode (After Shelley)’ by James Clerk Maxwell is a poem, which I didn’t really get and wasn’t sure why it was included, as the only poem in a collection of ‘stories’.

    ‘The Horror of the Heights’ by Arthur Conan Doyle is an exciting and sinister tale about what awaits aviators who fly too high.

    ‘Sultana’s Dream’ by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain is an early feminist utopian story which has interesting ideas but not much plot.

    ‘A Psychological Shipwreck’ by Ambrose Bierce is more supernatural than sci-fi and I didn’t have much opinion on it.

    ‘The Door in the Wall’ by H G Wells is a cleverly symbolic story which will make you think.

    Thank you to the publisher Pan Macmillan for the advance copy via NetGalley. The book will be published on 21st June.

  • 5 classic books which should be adapted for the screen

    I’m tired of yet more film and TV adaptations of the usual suspects, such as Little Women, Emma, A Christmas Carol, Dracula, Anna Karenina… Here are some classics which would, I think, make good viewing if well-made and kept to the original settings and eras.

    Evelina by Frances Burney. As far as I can discover, this excellent novel has not been filmed. Burney’s writing influenced Jane Austen and it seems a pity that no one has adapted the adventures of Evelina yet. She ought to steal some of Austen’s limelight.

    Tono-Bungay by H G Wells. Everyone knows The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. However, Tono-Bungay deserves to be better known. It’s a fascinating study of quack medicine, social class and the entrepreneur spirit. It would make a great TV series.

    Villette by Charlotte Brontë. There has only been one screen adaptation of this book, a TV series in 1970. Villette is one of my favourite classics and I find it superior even to the famous Jane Eyre. Lucy Snowe is one of my favourite characters.

    The Last Man by Mary Shelley. I have discovered that a film of this was released in 2008, set in the present day. Sadly, going by the reviews on IMDb, it’s absolutely dreadful. The book would certainly be very challenging to adapt but maybe there will be a decent version made in the future.

    Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf. No one, as far as I can tell, has adapted Woolf’s last (and possibly strangest) novel. It would be a good challenge for a particularly arty film-maker with an interest in sounds and symbols. There would be tension despite the idyllic village setting, due to the looming Second World War.

    Which classics would you like to see adapted for the screen?

     

  • What happened when I used a random generator to choose my re-reads

    Some time ago, I explained how I choose which book on my shelf to read next. I was only using this method for ‘new’ books, which I hadn’t read before. Then I decided I wanted to do more re-reads and of course there was only one way to choose them…

    I made a list of all the books on my shelf I hadn’t read for at least five years (or thereabouts), generated a random number and whichever book was at that number on the list, was my next re-read. Here’s what fate chose for me…

    Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. I’d been thinking about reading this one again, as it’s one of my favourites. And hey presto, it was chosen as my first re-read. I still loved it this time around. I finished it just as everywhere was starting to be closed due to coronavirus.

    The Bachelor by Stella Gibbons. Considering that I was intending to re-read Stella Gibbons anyway, this was a fortunate choice. Since I have several of her books on my shelf, it’s statistically more likely that she’ll come up in the results.

    The Last Man by Mary Shelley. Re-reading this tragic story of a plague in the 21st century seemed an odd coincidence. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to re-read it otherwise, as it seemed a little too close to what was happening.

    Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. I’ve read the Gormenghast trilogy twice and was due for another re-read. This curious, witty and gothic piece of literary fiction was excellent escapism during lockdown.

    The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories edited by Tom Shippey. This generally excellent collection of stories spans nearly 100 years. When I opened it to re-read again, I found a post-it note from last time, on which I’d listed my favourite stories!

    Remember Me by Christopher Pike. I have a few books on my shelf by the master of 90s American teen horror. It was about time I re-read one of them.

    To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I re-read this classic every few years and since the last time was 2014, it seems that the random generator knew it was due. I’d also recently acquired the DVD, so I watched it straight afterwards and then wrote a ‘film of the book’ post.

    Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J K Rowling and Jack Thorne. I read this playscript when it was first published in 2016 and ever since I watched it last year, I’d been meaning to re-read. J K Rowling has of course been in the news lately and although I wish she hadn’t alienated herself from many of her fans, there will always be a place in my heart for the books.

    The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. I previously featured this book in a time-travelling bookworm post, mentioning that I’d be sure to re-read… well, I ended up re-reading sooner than I’d anticipated!

     

  • Review of ‘In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein’ by Fiona Sampson

    This is an unusual biography of Mary Shelley, the author best known for Frankenstein and The Last Man. I really wanted to like it but unfortunately the writing style was too strange.

    It wasn’t a bad reading experience and I did learn a lot about Mary Shelley, her friends and the times they lived in. The first couple of chapters were especially good. There was no timeline. Evidence for Mary’s childhood is scarce so the author did an excellent job of piecing these early years together. What grated on me was the mixture of tenses, which for a biography of someone who lived two hundred years ago was quite odd to read. I think if only the present tense was used, this might have worked better. However, telling us what Mary is doing now (i.e. placing ourselves in 1818 or whenever), then saying what is going to happen to her, then presenting all this from the perspective of today, was too muddled. I also thought there were too many questions without answers, as if the book was fiction. That said, Fiona Sampson is a poet and the style is suitably literary and a little self-indulgent.

    The author is in search of Mary Shelley but I’m not sure if she really found her. Usually when I read a biography, such as that of Queen Victoria or Jane Austen, I feel close to the subject, appreciate her even more and am mourning her by the end of her life story. I didn’t feel this at all with Sampson’s book. I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for a straightforward biography of Mary Shelley, but if you want glimpses and conjectures and an unusual style, you might enjoy it.

    First published in 2018 by Profile Books.

  • Review of ‘The Last Man’ by Mary Shelley

    The Last Man is beautifully written, poetic and dramatic. It’s also one of the grimmest and most depressing books I’ve ever read.

    A prophecy, found by the author in a cave, tells the story of Lionel Verney. Although set in the late 21st century, it’s not really a prediction of how the future will be, as society is rather similar to Mary Shelley’s day, except that England is now a republic on the verge of civil war. The focus is on the relationships that Lionel builds with his friends, the romances between them, and his travels in Greece and Italy. A plague then spreads through the world, eventually reaching London and devastating the population. By the end of the story (this isn’t a spoiler – the clue is in the title) no one is left except for Lionel, the last man, writing his memoirs which no one will see.

    The author of Frankenstein, by the time she wrote The Last Man, had returned from the Continent, having lost her husband and three of her children. We can see the heartbreaking effects of this in the novel, which has many dreadfully sad scenes of people losing their loved ones. Maybe this was a kind of therapy for Shelley, writing her grief into her work. The novel is also a tribute to the landscape, architecture and classical literature of Greece and Italy.

    It’s not an easy read at all and in these particular times, the content is uncomfortably topical. By a strange coincidence, the random generator (which I now use to choose my re-reads, in addition to which new books on my shelf to read next) chose this book for me to re-read.

    First published in 1826. My edition was published by Wordsworth Classics in 2004.

     

  • 10 writers I’d love to have coffee with – time travel edition!

    My previous post on writers I’d love to have coffee with was very popular. My blogger friend Ryan stole my idea and then he also did a time travel edition – which I’m now stealing from him. So here are 10 writers I’d want to meet, if someone invented a time machine. Since most of my favourite writers are actually from the past, this was a difficult choice to make…

    Charlotte Brontë. I’d travel to Haworth Parsonage (which I’ve visited before, but obviously not in 1847) and we’d go for a walk on the windswept moor while discussing the recent publication of Jane Eyre. Although this time was a relatively happy moment in Charlotte’s life, I would feel sad knowing what the future had in store for herself and her siblings.

    H G Wells. The master of science fiction was noted for predicting the future. I love musing upon the future so I think we’d click. We’d meet at the turn of the 20th century and I’d tell him that The Time Machine is one of my favourite books. However, I wouldn’t tell him what a mess the BBC made of The War of the Worlds.

    Stella Gibbons. We’d meet in the late 1940s for a cup of tea and a bun in a cheap and cheerful café, like so many of her female characters do. I too have a sharp sense of humour so I think we’d have some laughs together. I’d tell her how much I like her post-Cold Comfort Farm novels and that after their reissues, many readers are delighted to discover them.

    Virginia Woolf. I’d be intimidated by the prospect of meeting one of the greatest modern writers but I think she’d be fascinating to talk to. We’d have a smart lunch somewhere in London in the 1920s. I probably wouldn’t admit to her that I’ve touched (and, er, sniffed) a leather travel bag which belonged to her and which now sits in the Penguin Random House archive.

    Mary Shelley. A super-intelligent and fascinating writer, Shelley would be an amazing person to meet, in between her writing, romantic journeys and tragic life events. I think it would be best to meet in Italy, where she spent a lot of her time. We could have proper Italian coffee and discuss the now legendary circumstances in which she wrote Frankenstein.

    Jane Austen. It would be fantastic to see what Jane was really like, both in appearance and behaviour. We’d have a civilised tea at Chawton, Hampshire and talk about books. I’d try not to make some grave error in manners. It would be tempting to tell her how famous her name will become and also that what most people remember about Pride and Prejudice is Mr Darcy’s wet shirt scene.

    Harper Lee. A very private person with a reputation as a recluse, merely because she didn’t grant interviews, Harper Lee might be a little reserved about meeting up. If we did, however, we would go to an anonymous New York coffee shop in 1961, the year that To Kill A Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize. I’d be tempted to suggest never to publish Go Set A Watchman…

    George Orwell. Meeting Eric Arthur Blair would be fascinating, I’m sure. I think we’d have strong coffee someplace full of cigarette smoke. Or perhaps we would have a pint in a poverty-stricken northern town while he researches his book The Road to Wigan Pier. While I really admire Nineteen Eighty-Four, I would be too sad to meet him during the writing of it, as he was very ill.

    H P Lovecraft. He has a reputation as weird and lonely with a far-out imagination, so I think we’d get on well. We’d meet in 1930s New England in some sinister old town haunted by eldritch beings older than the universe. Knowing he was to have a relatively short life dominated by poverty and tragedy, I’d also want to tell him how influential his work will be and maybe give him a hug.

    Thomas Hardy. Dorset in the 1880s would be the obvious location to meet the author of favourite classics such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge. We would have afternoon tea at Max Gate, the house he designed. I feel that he would be easier to get on with than some other Victorian writers as he seems unconventional and sympathetic.

    Which writers from the past would you like to meet? Do you wish someone would hurry up and invent time travel?