The Plattner Story and Others:

by H.G. Wells

This carefully crafted "The Plattner Story and Others (The original 1897 edition of 17 fantasy and science fiction short stories)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The Plattner Story and Others is a collection of seventeen short stories written by H.G. Wells. This volume was first published in March 1897 by Methuen & Co. Table of contents : "The Plattner Story" "The Argonauts of the Air" "The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham" "In the Abyss" "The Apple" "Under the Knife" "The Sea-Raiders" "Pollock and the Porroh Man" "The Red Room" "The Cone" "The Purple Pileus" "The Jilting of Jane" "In the Modern Vein" "A Catastrophe" "The Lost Inheritance" "The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic" "A Slip Under the Microscope" Herbert George "H. G." Wells (1866 – 1946) was an English writer, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Classics, Humor

62 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1897

About the author

Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Reviews

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cephalopods, Apples, Mushrooms, Graves – A Typical Wells Salad

In my university days, I once borrowed from the vaults of the English department of the library a veritable doorstopper of a book that claimed to contain all the collected short stories H.G. Wells ever wrote. In fact, it also offered some of the novellas, like The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. It was the first time had I ever read Wells, and it was a lasting experience to me. There was especially one obscure little story that thrilled me – and it had the unimposing, yet strangely evocative title “The Apple”.

“The Apple” is one of the stories the reader will be treated to in the short story collection The Plattner Story and Others, and it is this tale, along with one or two others, that earn this collection a five-star rating. It describes how a young man by the telling name of Hinchcliff, who is on his way to take office as “junior assistant at the Holmwood Grammar School – a very enviable position”, makes the acquaintance of a stranger on the train, an elderly man who shows him an exotic apple and tells him the story of how he came by the fruit. Claiming that this is one of the Apples from the Tree of Knowledge, the stranger tells Mr. Hinchcliff of his qualms about eating it. Would knowledge be worth the potential heartaches involved in also knowing the most secret thoughts of everyone around us? This is just one of the questions the elderly man asks himself before he finally yields to an impulse and gives the apple to Hinchcliff, already repenting his premature decision when the train is carrying him on, leaving Hinchcliff on the platform. Hinchcliff, full of the proprieties his new position demands of him, does not know what to do with the apple:

”He would have eaten the thing, and attained omniscience there and then, but it would seem so silly to go into town sucking a juicy fruit — and it certainly felt juicy. If one of the boys should come by, it might do him a serious injury with his discipline so to be seen. And the juice might make his face sticky and get upon his cuffs — or it might be an acid juice as potent as lemon, and take all the colour out of his clothes.”

Finally, Hinchcliff is so upset by this apple that he flings it across a stone wall into an orchard but from this moment on, he cannot help thinking that he might have thrown away something invaluable. The regret of his rash action haunts him, but – quite interestingly – “never […] when he was happy or busily occupied.” When one night, he decides to slip into the orchard and retrieve his precious fruit, he is bitterly disappointed because the apple has disappeared.

This little story pretty much sums up all there is to know about knowledge: The fact that it might be a double-edged sword, giving you much more than you bargained for, the inextricable link between knowledge and regret, but also the circumstance that university people are often more concerned about mores and the proprieties of their day and age than about the acquisition of knowledge.

But also most of the other ingredients of this Wells salad are fresh and sometimes spicy – for example the satirical piece “The Story of the Last Trump”, or the grotesquely exuberant “The Purple Pileus”. There are also grim excursions into the darker recesses of human nature, as in “A Catastrophe”, “A Slip Under the Microscope”, “The Cone” or “In the Modern Vein: An Umsympathetic Love Story”, where all boils down to potatoes. Last, not least, there are also unsettling horror stories, such as “The Plattner Story” with its eerie creatures from a realm beyond sadly watching the living, “Pollock and the Porroh Man”, which can also be read as a satire of colonialism, the semi-documentary “The Sea Raiders”, and “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, a tale of stolen identity.

I think you will find it hard not to read this book too quickly, a book that gives you a good impression of the manifold narrative voices of H.G. Wells.

[Nathan Jerpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection, seventeen tales published between 1894-1896, is one of the best I've read in a long time.

Wells' early SF novels are part of our culture's consciousness by now, but it is here in the short story form that I was able to fully appreciate his astonishing range. He is not *only* the author you think he is - along with SF we get ghost stories, grisly horror pieces, adventures with voodoo and magic mushrooms, all kinds of stuff. I imagine most of these were written before he was famous, certainly before he was considered a science fiction writer. In that sense you get to see a new genre coming into being here, history being made. Many of the expected elements are present but there are some unexpected ones too. In several stories he takes on a comic voice with a sinister edge. I can't help but hear in it the overtones of a post-Victorian age, where things we used to know are perhaps not so intelligible anymore.

I felt much the same way here as I did after reading Poe's complete stories. By going beyond the most famous tales I got a much more complete sense of the author's work. Now when I return to those famous stories again I'll appreciate them all the more.

Next up is Tales of Space of Time, his third collection. I'm reading from the green hardback omnibus put out by Gollancz in 2011. It has all five collections plus enough uncollected stuff to make a sixth. It's a great volume and it claims to be complete.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Plattner Story and Others is a collection of seventeen short stories by H. G. Wells.

THE PLATTNER STORY 3.5⭐
THE ARGONAUTS OF THE AIR 3⭐
THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM 5⭐
IN THE ABYSS 3.25⭐
THE APPLE 5⭐
UNDER THE KNIFE 3.25⭐
THE SEA-RAIDERS 5⭐
POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN 5⭐
THE RED ROOM 5⭐
THE CONE 4⭐
THE PURPLE PILEUS 2.5⭐
THE JILTING OF JANE 2⭐
IN THE MODERN VEIN 2.5⭐
A CATASTROPHE 3⭐
THE LOST INHERITANCE 4⭐
THE SAD STORY OF A DRAMATIC CRITIC 3⭐
A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 3.5⭐

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elegí la lectura de este libro por H.G. Wells, un autor de reconocida y merecida reputación en la temprana ciencia ficción, con clásicos indiscutibles de la literatura universal como son ‘La máquina del tiempo’, ‘La guerra de los mundos’ o ‘El hombre invisible’; por acercarme a uno de los pioneros del género; pero las narraciones de esta antología se alejan un tanto de la ciencia ficción; se enmarcan más bien en la literatura fantástica, y esto a supuesto una pequeña decepción.

Estos son los diecisiete cuentos contenidos en ‘La historia de Plattner y otras narraciones’:

- LA HISTORIA DE PLATTNER (****). Plattner es un profesor en el Colegio Privado de Sussexville, que imparte, entre otras asignaturas, química. El caso de Plattner es muy curioso. Resulta que tiene todos los órganos internos cambiados de sitio, están en el lado opuesto al habitual. Todo empezó cuando el profesor manipulaba en clase una extraña sustancia... Muy buen relato, imaginativo y con buenas descripciones de una posible cuarta dimensión.

- LOS ARGONAUTAS DEL AIRE (****). Monson, un hombre adinerado con grandes sueños, trabaja junto a Woodhouse en un gran proyecto: poder realizar un vuelo con su artefacto planeador. A esto lo han dado en llamar la locura de Monson. Gran relato, que suscita la imaginación del lector y lo retrotrae a las fantasías de la infancia sobre poder volar algún día.

- LA HISTORIA DEL DIFUNTO SEÑOR ELVESHAM (*****). Este cuento es una advertencia de Edward George Eden. Nos advierte sobre cierto viejecito al que conoció un aciago día, en el que le propuso cederle todos sus bienes a cambio de unas condiciones específicas. Extraordinario relato que seguramente ha inspirado a más de un escritor y cineasta a lo largo de los años.

- EN EL ABISMO (***). Elstead se propone bajar a las profundidades oceánicas en una extraña máquina esférica, toda acolchada por dentro, y con dos ventanas de gruesos vidrios, todo ello preparado, se supone, para superar la presión a la que será sometida tal máquina. ¿Qué encontrará este aventurero en el incógnito fondo marino?

- LA MANZANA (***). El señor Hinchcliff viaja en tren junto a un peculiar compañero, un tipo que asegura poseer una de las legendarias Manzanas del Árbol de la Ciencia.

- BAJO EL BISTURÍ (*****). El protagonista se va a someter a una intervención quirúrgica en casa de Haddon, su cirujano. Pero, cuando está en la camilla, parece ser consciente de todo lo que sucede. Hasta se ve salir de su cuerpo y alejarse de la tierra en un viaje verdaderamente alucinante. Otro gran relato que bien podría haber salido de la mente de Lovecraft, y que igualmente ha debido servir de inspiración a más de un autor.

- LOS INVASORES MARINOS (**). Sin saber la razón, un buen día las costas de Sidmouth son atacadas por cefalópodos de grandes tentáculos cuyas presas son tanto animales como seres humanos.

- POLLOCK Y EL HECHICERO PORROH (***). Pollock no sabía en el lío en el que se iba a meter cuando, en una aldea africana, disaparó contra un indígena de la tribu porroh, que resultó ser un gran hechicero.

- LA HABITACIÓN ROJA (**). El joven protagonista no cree que exista nada extraño en la habitación roja, aunque los otros tres habitantes de la mansión, sirvientes del anterior dueño, aseguran lo contrario.

- EL CONO (***). Horrocks, dueño de una metalurgia, está a punto de llevar de visita por la fábrica a Raut, un artista (que está liado con la mujer de Horrorcks). ¿Sospecha algo el marido, o son tontas imaginaciones de Raut?

- EL PÍLEO ROJO (*). El señor Coombes está harto de la vida que lleva con su mujer, la cuál acaba de invitar a una pareja amiga a tomar el té. Es por ello que ha salido enfado de casa a pasear, dispuesto a no volver más a su hogar.

- LAS CALABAZAS DE JANE (*). Jane está saliendo con William, con el que cree tener muchas posibilidades de llevar una vida juntos.

- AL ESTILO DE HOY: UNA HISTORIA DE AMOR ANTIPÁTICA (**). Aubrey Vair, un escritor mediocre y casado, queda profundamente enamorado de una joven que parece corresponderle.

- UNA CATÁSTROFE (**). Winslow posee una pequeña tienda que no va muy bien, y para colmo ha contraído una gran deuda con unos proveedores. Está muy preocupado y no sabe cómo salir de este embrollo, ni cómo comunicárselo a su esposa.

- LA HERENCIA PERDIDA (***). El protagonista está contándole a un conocido cómo su tío le dejó todo su dinero. Pero la historia que le está contando tiene más enjundia que la que a primera vista parece. ¡Ah, el Destino cruel!

- LA TRISTE HISTORIA DE UN CRÍTICO DRAMÁTICO (***). A Cummins le encargan realizar críticas de obras de teatro, y eso que nunca ha asistido a una representación. Quién le iba a decir que su carácter se iba a ver tan perjudicado por los malditos actores.

- UNA MUESTRA EN EL MICROSCOPIO (***). La rivalidad de Hill y Wedderburn por alcanzar el primer puesto en los exámenes, y por conseguir la atención de cierta joven, llevará a Hill a un situación muy comprometida.

Como se puede apreciar por los relatos anteriores, muy pocos tienen como temática la ciencia ficción, que es lo buscaba en un principio con este libro. Aun así, ha sido una lectura muy fructífera y he podido leer algunos muy buenos cuentos.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

(1897) Wells’ second collection of short stories. They showcase one of his overlooked strengths—not simply the creative ideas, but the immersive, well-imagined treatment of them. Whether it’s hurtling through the air in a crazy flying machine/projectile, or through the cosmos, or five miles down to the bottom of the sea in a metal sphere, or being inside a man’s brain as it changes into the brain of another—you feel that you are there. They are all fun and impeccably written, but the most worthy of rereading are The Sea Raiders, Pollock and the Porroh Man, The Obliterated Man, and A Slip Under the Microscope.

____
The Plattner Story—a man disappears into a parallel universe or “out of space” into the fourth dimension and returns days later the mirror image of himself. Classic Wells, where the sci-fi touches on the supernatural, and the ordinary man is put in contact with the mysterious and strange. Possibly inspired by An Inhabitant of Carcosa.

____
The Argonauts of the Air—Wells anticipates the future sacrifices of test pilots, paying tribute to the daring and spirit—and deaths—that will help us conquer the air (and of course far more).

____
The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham—a strange old man introduces himself to the narrator, who, even while on the alert for a con, falls victim to a magic scam. Freaky, and actually a little frightening.

____
In the Abyss—“Good heavens!” he exclaimed; “What little things we are! What daring little devils!”

Close encounter, deep-sea version. Such a submersible sphere would not be invented for 30 years. I liked when Wells imagines how Man must appear to this underwater race:

“We should be known to them however, as strange, meteoric creatures, wont to fall catastrophically dead out of the mysterious blackness of their watery sky.”

____
The Apple—“It was a most extraordinary story to be told in a third-class carriage on a Sussex railway. It was as if the real was a mere veil to the fantastic, and here was the fantastic poking through.”

Deceptively simple allegory. Cool description of coming across the apple of knowledge:

“And hardly had the shepherd set out when there came a noise like thunder, the beating of invisible wings hurrying up the valley…”

____
Under the Knife—Now Wells pushes his imagination to the ends of the universe. Lovely ending, as the patient awakes with a newfound sense of peace.

____
The Sea Raiders—Attack of the giant squids. Grisly. Scary. Really just excellent.

____
Pollock and the Porroh Man—imperial gothic, one of the best examples of its kind, at least in the beginning. By the end it basically becomes The Phantom Rickshaw.

____
The Red Room—conventional haunted house episode. Written earlier than the others.

____
The Cone—skipped. Reviewed previously in The Door and the Wall and Other Stories.

____
The Purple Pileus—Wells is really funny describing a man on magic mushrooms.

____
The Jilting of Jane—little tale of a broken heart. Funny and sad in the Kipling manner.

____
In the Modern Vein—“Since Shelley set the fashion, your man of gifts has been assured that his duty to himself and his duty to his wife are incompatible, and his renunciation of the Philistine has been marked by such infidelity as his means and courage warranted.”

A perhaps self-mocking look at a literary philanderer. The subtitle is “An Unsympathetic Love Story.” My favorite part was the young man trying to act deep and impress a pretty girl while a deaf aunt at the table interrupts him: “Has your wife got Jane’s recipe for stuffing trout?”

____
A Catastrophe—the tales are moving away from the speculative into the realistic. The title is an ironical bit of misdirection.

____
The Lost Inheritance—another ironic twist. Charming. Wells must’ve written these fantasies about inheritances during his starving-artist days.

____
The Obliterated Man—(also called The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic).

Barbed tale about the stage and a critic who is a helpless mimic. (Interesting that Wells should link the two, since part of the joke is how unreal actors act—how they mimic each other rather than real life). I wonder if Woody Allen read this before making Zelig.

The premise becomes really pretty funny, as the poor guy can’t help gesticulating melodramatically even as his girlfriend breaks up with him. And it’s hilarious how he always happened to look down on the theater. Still, there’s something mysterious about this story.

____
A Slip Under the Microscope—a brief but rich picture of student life at what is now the Royal College of Science, full of academic and romantic competition, pompous debates on Utopianism, socialism and atheism, and scientific studies mixed with the heady distractions of jealousy and poetry, class consciousness and love.

“You will understand now how it was necessary, if only in the interests of humanity, that Hill should demolish Wedderburn in the forthcoming examination…”’

Wells also wryly shows how the petty and personal can become the political. The main character, a “vigorous youngster, with a serene contempt for the clergy of all denominations, and a fine ambition to reconstruct the world,” is both insufferable and sympathetic and Wells doesn’t try to varnish the truth, even though I suspect that the impoverished, foolish and gifted scholar was based on himself.

“His mind was full of this grotesque puzzle in ethics that had suddenly been sprung upon him.”

I loved this one. By the end every sentence is excellent, the picture sharpens into an absorbing story, and the casual banter about inducements and righteousness in the beginning becomes a meaningful theme.

More quotes:

“He goaded Hill to incivilities by neat, shallow, and exceedingly effective personalities about the socialist leaders, until Hill hated Bernard Shaw's graceful egotisms, William Morris's limited editions and luxurious wall-papers, and Walter Crane's charmingly absurd ideal working men, about as much as he hated Wedderburn.”

“The Hill–Wedderburn quarrel, for in his unostentatious way Wedderburn reciprocated Hill's ill-veiled rivalry, became a tribute to her indefinable charm; she was the Queen of Beauty in a tournament of scalpels and stumpy pencils.”

“He fancied he found justifications for his position in Browning, but they vanished on analysis.” [This is such a quintessential Browning experience].

[Maik Civeira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colección de cuentos varios de uno de los padres de la ciencia ficción, escritor que me ha fascinado desde hace algunos años gracias a sus novelas del género.

Aquí, además de cuentos de ciencia ficción, podemos encontrar algunos de fantasía y horror, pero también narraciones realistas. No todos los textos son igualmente memorables, pero ninguno tiene desperdicio.

"La historia del difunto señor Elvesham" es un relato que mezcla terror con ciencia ficción, mientras que "Pollock y el hechicero porroh" sigue la tradición horrorífica de las maldiciones paganas en el mundo colonial.

Casi una mitad de los cuentos son completamente realistas y presentan distintos cuadros de la sociedad inglesa de finales del siglo XIX. Desde los pequeñoburgueses hasta los estudiantes. Si algo tienen en común es que tratan de las extrañas ironías de la vida.

Lo que más me gustó fue encontrar en algunos de estos relatos las semillas que influirían en diversos autores que sé que leyeron a Wells con admiración. "En el abismo" y "Los invasores marinos" auncian a Lovecraft; "La manzana" tiene similitudes con algunos de Borges, y "Bajo el bisturí" plantea la misma premisa básica que "El Hacedor de Estrellas", la novela clásica de Olaf Stapledon (que, por cierto, prologó Borges).

Si les gustan los cuentos, la ficción decimonónica o la obra de Wells, van a disfrutar este pequeño volumen.

[Esteban de Jesus Ruiz Aramburo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intercambios de cuerpos, transformaciones, venganza, calamares gigantes, monotonía conyugal, exploraciones marinas, viajes astrales mientras estás siendo operado, etc. Todo eso y más vamos a encontrar en estos relatos. Es genial leer una faceta diferente de Wells, pues muchos nos adentramos en su literatura por obras como: 'el hombre invisible'y 'la máquina del tiempo'. Sin embargo este libro de relatos es una buena forma de conocer la versatilidad temática y estilística de Wells. Si bien no todos los relatos te van a enganchar o dejar un buen sabor de boca por la manera en que son tratados y desarrollados debo decir que sí hay bastantes que no van a dejar indiferentes pues causan desde rabia, risa, decepción, coraje y todas las emociones que se te puedan ocurrir. Destaco los que en lo personal me gustaron mucho:
1.- La historia del difunto señor elvesham
2.- En el abismo
3.- La manzana
4.- Pollock y el hechicero porroh
5.- La habitación roja
6.- La herencia pérdida
7.- La triste historia de un crítico dramático.

[John Croall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short story collection.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag for sure, but everything in it is stylish.

[Tony Ciak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not all Science Fiction good historical period writings

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, well 'The Plattner Story' was weird, this guy, a school teacher called Plattner is testing some substances in a lab when suddenly the surroundings start to look really strange and then he ends up in a really strange land seeing mighty strange things of course, like head like creatures which seem to be viewing earthlings in some distressing sort of way...