Product Description

Containing twenty-nine stories of the weird and uncanny, all originally published in the Strand, this collection is an enthralling mix of horror and the supernatural, unnatural disasters, madness, and revenge. We read of a germ that turned the world blind in Edgar Wallace's "The Black Grippe." In "A Sense of the Future," the world supply of oil gives out, cars become obsolete, and after three months we have returned to the days of horse-drawn carriages. In other tales, a camera takes pictures of the future, and a 1971 newspaper is pushed through a mail slot forty years earlier. With spine-tingling stories from the likes of Sapper, Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and a comic fantasy by H.G. Wells, as well as two tales from the children's writer E. Nesbit, Strange Tales from the Strand provides a rich collection for all lovers of the macabre.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2462656 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author

About the Editor: Jack Adrian is the author of several thrillers as well as war and science fiction novels. An authority on this century's popular and genre fiction, he has compiled a number of anthologies and single-author collections, and has edited E.F. Benson, and Desirable Residences and Other Stories.

Customer Reviews

Useful, welcome reprints of forgotten works
This book reprints "strange" tales by both famous and forgotten authors as appeared originally in The Strand magazine, which published from 1891 to 1950.The stories were written by writers (eg F. Tennyson Jesse) now familiar only to aficionados of the occult; those still recognized but now little read (Hugh Walpole, Edgar Wallace) and those still popular (H.G. Wells,Conan Doyle,Graham Greene). There are some gems here ("Waxworks" by W.L. George), along with highly prophetic, even futuristic stories (H.G. Wells's "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper";Martin Swayne's "A Sense of the Future," written in 1924 but predicting a world in which automobiles, then a novelty, become obsolete due to rising petrol prices). A. Conan Doyle's "The Horror of the Heights", written in 1913 but dealing with horrible monsters met above the clouds by a daring pilot, is excellent and gives a sense of airplanes (mono and bi-planes)and flying of that era. This is overall a good collection, though some of the stories don't date well, and should be read at least by those with "strange" tastes.

ASSUREDLY STRANGE; AND THAT IS A GOOD THING
Strange is as it should be. This collection is about enjoyment from gifted English prose stylists on a crusade to bend reality. The Strand Magazine was one of the premier prose outlets of its day and this collection serves to introduce it to a new audience. The stories are delightful reading, some dark, some whimsical, some in the venerable futuristic style. Anticipation arises as the reader comes to the end of a story and turns that corner into the next. Some offerings demand serious reflection. This collection is one that over time will be reread at least once, perhaps more.