Isaac Asimov Presents The Best Horror And Supernatural Of The 19th Century

by Isaac Asimov (Editor)

EARLY SCIENCE FICTION STORIES TELL OF ROBOTS, NATURAL DISASTERS, AND INVISIBLE CREATURE, IMMORTALITY AND TIME TRAVEL.

The adventure of the German student / Washington Irving --
El verdugo / Honoré de Balzac --
The story of the Greek slave / Captain Marryat --
The iron shroud / William Mudford --
Schalken the painter / J. Sheridan LeFanu --
The tell-tale heart / Edgar Allan Poe --
The doom of the Griffiths / Mrs. Gaskell --
Circumstance / Harriet Prescott Spofford --
Torture by hope / Villiers de L'Isle-Adam --
The diamond necklace / Guy de Maupassant --
The strange ride of Morrowbie Jukes / Rudyard Kipling --
Markheim / Robert Louis Stevenson --
Sleepyhead / Anton Chekov --
His unconquerable enemy / W.C. Morrow --
The gravedigger's daughter / Léopold von Sacher-Masoch --
An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge / Ambrose Bierce --
Vengeance / Lorimer Stoddard --
Désirée's baby / Kate Chopin --
The squaw / Bram Stoker --
A dreadful night / Edwin L. Arnold --
The dead valley / Ralph Adams Cram --
Pollock and the porroh man / H.G. Wells --
The story of the Brazilian cat / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle --
The dead smile / F. Marion Crawford --
A game of chess / Robert Barr.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[[on hiatus, probably forever] The rockabilly werewolf from Mars · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although there are some interesting stories in here, some of them rarely reprinted, I would hardly consider this to be the best 19th century horror fiction. My main issue is the overrepresentation of non-supernatural horror, which I find to be much less interesting (and in many cases, especially here, boring) than supernatural horror. In addition to that, many of these stories are not the best that the authors have done; for example Crawford is represented by The Dead Smile, rather than The Upper Berth. I would also represent Wells with The Red Room and Bierce with The Damned Thing, instead of the chosen stories by them. Finally, several of the best writers from the era are not in the book, most egregiously M. R. James. On its own, it's a perfectly serviceable anthology of 19th century horror, but the stories hardly constitute the best the period has to offer.