Customer Reviews

The Country of the Blind: And Other Stories

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This review is for the paperback edition of the "Oxford World Classics" edition edited by Michael Sherborne, with 33 stories collected. It's probably the best place to start on HG Wells' short fiction, containing the title story, his most well-known, and also many other masterpieces including the quite chilling realist revenge story "The Cone", a great example of his early comedic style in "The New Accellerator" and the story that is in my opinion his best, "The Door in the Wall." This is a story that is all atmosphere, sentiment and heartbreak; not typical of Wells but he carries it off in an extraordinarily powerful way in just a few pages. Certainly one of the most significant and influential stories of a door into another place....

Wells proves to be a master of most of the popular shorter forms of his day - the psychological horror, the monster story, the odd invention story, the romance, the harsh and gritty realistic story of crime. There are a few pieces here that I'm not crazy about, but nothing out and out bad. At any rate, if you don't find something to love in the stories I've mentioned, or most of the others in this collection, you are probably not a Wells fan. This is a touchstone.

Clean, new, and everything it promised to be. When I was 14, in 8th grade English class, I'd read a short story that had had a message that had stayed with me through life. Though I'd forgotten the author and title of it, I'd referred to it many times in my thoughts, and in telling other people the message, too. I've been searching for it for about 30 years or so, and finally found it on Amazon's search engine. (I'd tried before, but nothing ever surfaced.) Anyway, here it is: The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells. It's a wonderful story with great metaphors and, unfortunately, it contains a message about what happens to special people with unusual insights while they are alive, and the narrowmindedness and blindness of us all, and the strength of peer pressure. I'm so grateful to have it now.

An extraordinary collection of short stories by H.G. Wells. Thirty-three tales picked by Wells himself later in life as the ones he most wanted to represent his legacy in the short form, with a wonderful introduction by Wells, musing on the short story, which could have been written yesterday. And, oh yes, it's free (though not navigable, sigh). Wells was a remarkable short story writer, who, in his early years, relished the form. His story "The Cone" is as scary a piece of realist terror fiction as you're likely to come across. And "The Crystal Egg" is one of my all-time favorite short stories, a baby kangaroo in the pouch of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Great great stuff.

This is what it says it is: a public domain text with navigation that allows the user to easily navigate the entire book, providing forward, backward and cross links to every section of the book. Most public domain texts (and far too many new texts) are just plain texts rendered into the Kindle format. This text was carefully constructed to fit the structure of this book.

COUNTRY OF THE BLIND is a collection of 33 short stories hand picked by H.G. Wells as his best. The stories were written first published between 1894 and 1906 in both magazines and other Wells' anthologies. Most of the stories are science fiction, though a few are not. Among my favorites were "The Stolen Bacillus," "The Lord of the Dynamos," "Under the Knife," "The Sea Raiders," "The Crystal Egg," "The Man Who Could Work Miracles," "The New Accelerator," "The Truth About Pyecraft," "The Magic Shop," "Empire of the Ants," and "Country of the Blind." "The Crystal Egg" and "The Magic Shop" both appear to have influenced Stephen King's NEEDFUL THINGS. Other stories were uninspired sleepers.

A fairly substantial chunk of Wells' short stories, and it appears that basically they have included all of the best, here, so a good option if you don't want to wade through the complete variety.

Country of the Blind : THE JILTING OF JANE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE CONE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE STOLEN BACILLUS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE AVU OBSERVATORY - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : AEPYORNIS ISLAND - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES. - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS. - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE MOTH - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : UNDER THE KNIFE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE SEA RAIDERS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE OBLITERATED MAN - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE PLATTNER STORY - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE RED ROOM - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE PURPLE PILEUS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE CRYSTAL EGG - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE STAR - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : A VISION OF JUDGMENT - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE NEW ACCELERATOR - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE MAGIC SHOP - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE DOOR IN THE WALL - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE BEAUTIFUL SUIT - H. G. Wells

No good.

2 out of 5

Too hot here.

3 out of 5

Anarchy plague hard to swallow.

3.5 out of 5

Hothouse leech.

3.5 out of 5

Big flying thing I think.

3.5 out of 5

Big egg hatching.

4 out of 5

Remote viewing.

3.5 out of 5

Engine sacrifice.

3.5 out of 5

Not fair to die before the end of the debate.

4 out of 5

Poison gold.

3.5 out of 5

Swap is not replacement.

3.5 out of 5

Operation scare.

3.5 out of 5

Cephalopod people eaters.

4 out of 5

Bad play.

2.5 out of 5

Other world reversal.

3 out of 5

Fear place.

4 out of 5

Magic mushies.

3 out of 5

Exam cheating.

3 out of 5

Tuning in Mars.

4 out of 5

Just a near miss, that planet going past Earth. Nothing to worry those Martians.

4 out of 5

It is really not a good idea to stop the Earth's rotation.

3.5 out of 5

Supernatural stuff seen.

2 out of 5

Deity impersonation.

3 out of 5

Snooks not for me.

2.5 out of 5

Future war visions.

3 out of 5

Puffballs, too many legs.

3.5 out of 5

Flash tonic.

3.5 out of 5

A man needs to get his physics straight when asking for supernatural dieting assistance.

4 out of 5

Genuine article here.

3.5 out of 5

Just waiting for the takeover.

4 out of 5

Other places to go.

3 out of 5

Hard to be King, no matter how many eyes.

4 out of 5

Fashion victim.

2.5 out of 5

3.5 out of 5