The Time Machine was the first of a number of these imaginative literary inventions. First published in 1895, the novel follows the adventures of a hypothetical Time Traveller who...

In no department of zoological science, indeed, are we quite so much in the dark as with regard to the deep-sea cephalopods. A mere accident, for instance, it was that led to the...

Mr. Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel, Hart, and Brown, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and for many years he was well known among those interested in psychical...

Written in 1896, The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of the earliest scientific romances. An instant sensation, it was meant as a commentary on Darwin’s theory of evolution,...

Tono-Bungay is a realist semiautobiographical novel narrated by George Ponderevo, who is persuaded to help develop the business of selling Tono-Bungay, a patent medicine created...

The observatory at Avu, in Borneo, stands on the spur of the mountain. To the north rises the old crater, black at night against the unfathomable blue of the sky. From the little...

Alfred Polly lives in the imaginary town of Fishbourne in Kent, England. A miserable Mr. Polly. He hates Foxbourne, he hates Foxbourne High Street, he hates his shop and his wife...

What these elves were like I have failed to gather, so vague and imperfect is his vocabulary, and so unobservant of all minor detail does he seem to have been. They were clothed...

Graham, an Englishman living in London in 1897 takes drugs to cure insomnia and falls into a coma. He wakes up in 2100. He later learns that he has inherited huge wealth and that...

Talking of the prices of birds, I've seen an ostrich that cost three hundred pounds,' said the Taxidermist, recalling his youth of travel. 'Three hundred pounds!'