By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Subliminal Man’ is a 1963 short story by J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), whose work has variously been categorised as ‘science fiction’, ‘dystopian’, ‘slipstream’, ‘alternative’, and a number of other labels. The story is set in a near-future world in which the population’s consumer habits are controlled by subliminal advertising, delivered via a series of signs that litter the urban landscape.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Moth’ is a short story by the British author H. G. Wells (1866-1946), published in his 1895 collection The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents. The tale might be regarded as a variation on the ‘ambiguous ghost story’ in that we as readers cannot be sure whether the moth in the story is the ghost of the protagonist’s old rival come back to haunt him, or a hallucination which exists only in his overworked brain.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Crystal Egg’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), first published in the New Review in 1897. The story might be regarded as a precursor to Wells’s novel, The War of the Worlds: the ‘crystal egg’ of the story’s title turns out to be a communication device Martians have left on earth.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Cosmopolite in a Café’ (1906) is a short story by the US short-story writer O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). His stories are characterised by their irony, their occasional sentimentality, and by their surprise twist endings. Although ‘A Cosmopolite in a Café’ is lacking in sentimentality, it contains O. Henry’s trademark twist at the end of the short narrative.
The story is narrated by a man in a café who gets talking to a well-travelled man who considers himself a ‘citizen of the world’ and who dislikes local or national pride.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘After Twenty Years’ is a short story by the American writer O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). A trademark of the O. Henry story is the surprise twist ending, and ‘After Twenty Years’ is a classic example of this. The story is about two friends who agree to meet up after twenty years to compare each other’s lives.