The Artificial Man and Other Stories. Clare Winger Harris

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Artificial Man and Other Stories - Clare Winger Harris страница

The Artificial Man and Other Stories - Clare Winger Harris Belt Revivals

Скачать книгу

>

      

       The Artificial Man and Other Stories

      More Belt Revivals

      Poor White by Sherwood Anderson

      Main-Travelled Roads by Hamlin Garland

      The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell

      The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic

      Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells

      The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt

       The Artificial Man and Other Stories

      Clare Winger Harris

Image

      Introduction copyright © 2019, Brad Ricca

      All rights reserved. This introduction or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      First Belt Publishing Edition 2019

      ISBN: 978-1-948742-32-0

Image

      Belt Publishing

      3143 West 33rd Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44019

       www.beltpublishing.com

      Book design by Meredith Pangrace

      Cover by David Wilson

       contents

      Introduction by Brad Ricca

       The Artificial Man

       The Fifth Dimension

       A Runaway World

       The Fate of the Poseidonia

       The Menace of Mars

       A Certain Soldier

       The Miracle of the Lily

       The Evolutionary Monstrosity

       The Diabolical Drug

      Baby on Neptune (with Miles J. Breuer, MD)

       The Ape Cycle

       The Vibrometer

       Possible Science Fiction Plots

       introduction

      I’m standing in front of a house outside Cleveland, half-waiting for a spaceship to arrive. When it finally appears, blotting out the sky, I will crane my neck and stare at its sleek, impossible angles. People will shout, point, and run.

      But I don’t see it.

      Instead, the house at 1652 Lincoln Avenue sits quiet. It was built in 1917 of stone brick with a front porch. The house is a duplex, split in two by an interior wall I can only imagine. There is a single dormer window sticking out from the attic, perched towards the sky. There is a big tree on the left, whose tips are already turning to fire, here in the September sun. The front door is closed.

      When I asked to organize a new edition of Clare Winger Harris’s stories, I knew I wanted to see the place she once lived in Lakewood, Ohio. But as I stare at her old house, I see little in the way of connection. There is some old grating and windowsills that may have survived the century, but that’s about it. The old bones are there, but the paint is new.

      People still live here, but there is no one home, so I don’t push it. What’s to push, anyway? This wasn’t William Faulkner’s house. Or Emily Dickinson’s. It didn't belong to Langston Hughes, who went to high school in Cleveland. No, this was the house of Clare Winger Harris, who wrote weird science fiction in the early decades of the twentieth century. If I rang the bell and announced that, like I was some door-to-door literary merit salesman, I can easily guess the reply:

       Who?

      It’s a fair response, especially for a woman author who wrote in a marginal genre in cheap magazines. That is why I wanted to write something here that wasn’t the usual elevation of her work. I don’t want to tell you what to think of her stories; I just want you to read them. Instead, I want to tell you about her.

      I circle around again, looking at the cracks and corners. I again hope for some unexplainable trans-temporal event, a sudden fold in space-time from which Ms. Harris would appear, stepping through a shimmering tunnel with Mary Poppins-like authority to answer my questions in full.

      I then realize that the people who live here now, whoever they are, might have one of those security cameras to guard against people stealing their Amazon packages. As I duck behind the dashboard, I think about what Clare might think of such an invention. I think of similar things possibly inside this house: phones, computers, microwaves, and televisions; pads and tablets and smart things you can shout at. In a way then, she was here in full.

      I look again. Maybe instead of an alien ship I can I hear the three baby boys she raised here, something we have in common. I can see her husband Frank, hat in hand, out the front door and on to his job as an engineer at American Monorail. I can almost see the postman come to the door. All writers, regardless of decade, wait for the mail.

      But I still can’t see her. I can’t see Clare. But she’s inside. I know it. I can hear the typing.

      If I had

Скачать книгу