By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Good Country People’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied short stories by Flannery O’Connor (1925-64).
The story, which focuses on a woman with a wooden leg who is befriended by a young and innocent-seeming bible salesman, takes in many themes, including innocence versus knowledge and our perceptions of others: perceptions which are often quite false.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Remember Sascha?’ is a short story by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), included in his 1996 collection Quicker Than the Eye. The story hasn’t attracted much in the way of critical commentary, either in academic studies or analyses of Bradbury’s work or more widely in the blogosphere, so this review is a small attempt to remedy that. First, to summarise this charming little story though.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘One Dollar’s Worth’ 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 ‘One Dollar’s Worth’ certainly has a few surprises in store for the reader in its closing paragraphs. The story is about a criminal who seeks vengeance on the judge who put him in prison, by intending to kill the judge’s daughter.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Motel Architecture’ is not one of the best-known short stories of the British author J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), but it’s one of his most prescient. And this is an author who anticipated everything from Ronald Reagan becoming US President (in the late 1960s) to videocalls and virtual socialising via a TV/computer screen (see his ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ for the latter).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The influence of H. G. Wells (1866-1946) on science fiction goes without saying. Brian Aldiss, in Trillion Year Spree, call him the Shakespeare of science fiction, acknowledging his role in raising the emerging genre to an art form. The tales of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds are familiar to millions of people, even those who have never read Wells’s books, thanks to notable film adaptations.