Tales of Wonder

by Mark Twain, David Ketterer

Mark Twain's unsettling imagination and passionate curiosity roamed far and wide—racing across microscopic worlds and interstellar voids, leaping ahead to fearful futures, and speculating on dazzling inventions to come. Tales of Wonder features some of the most notable but little-known science fiction available, penned by the famed American humorist and writer. With characteristic wit and acuity, Twain embarks on an epic journey into a drop of water, catches a glimpse of an invisible man, reveals a generation-starship-type world in the heart of a drifting iceberg, and imagines futuristic devices of instantaneous communication such as the "phrenophone" and "telelectroscope." Twain pioneered the use of time travel to the past in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. As for the future, he envisioned a radical utopia of absolute suffrage and future histories in which a global theocracy holds sway or a monarchy rules America. This entertaining and absorbing collection of tales reminds us that the former steamboat pilot dreamed about the stars, anticipated and dreaded the future, and above all was continually surprised and enchanted by the world around him.

387 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite a disappointment. Some of the shorter tales work fine, and Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven is wonderful, but the longer pieces are awful. They start with one, simple SF idea (a history of the far future, microscopic voyages) but quickly abandon them for a succession of interminable digressions. Most of the time the strange worlds Twain visits are pretty much identical to 19th century American society, except for one or two curious differences. This is usually the excuse for some leaden satire on popular figures of Twain's day, many now long forgotten so that much of the story is only comprehensible due to the extensive notes at the back of the book. The bulk of the story is then taken up with the narrator trying to convince the natives that his own world really exists, fantastical as it may seem to them.
Most of the stories end abruptly, and many of them are simply fragments or notes or drafts.
Not a very satisfying reading experience.