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Mixed bag so far.

When I bought this book I was looking forward to the Clive Barker story. Turns out it was just a poem of a few sentences, makes it feel like it was just marketing to be able to put his name on the cover.

The Green caravanserai - best story so far, I like the mix of high tech and ancient Arabic (?) traditional life mixed 4/5

The age of fish, post-flowers - got bored and didn't finish 1/5

Finished novel 5/6 in this book: “The first man on the moon”. Verdict: it started out okay-ish and had some interesting/entertaining but became less so as the story went on. 5/10

Finished “The war of the worlds”. Holds up still with some exceptions. The writing could have been better with some of the descriptions of the invasion being cut and instead the characters and aliens being more developed. Not everything makes sense scientifically but this can excused given how old the book is, and much of it actually is believable still! I like the designs of the alien machines especially.

Finished The Invisible Man: maybe my least favourite so far, it takes far to long to get going and it tries for some village comedy that quickly gets boring. The first half of the story is like that and not much happens in terms of story or character development. The second half of the story is better luckily and faster paced. It’s interesting to see how someone acts invisible but hard to sympathise.

The island of Doctor Monroe. Was a bit slow to get into but after a while it got more interesting.The story is about a man stranded on an island run by a Mengel-type doctor undertaking unethical experiments. The language is readable for being so old but suffers a bit from it, has some descriptions that certainly is politically incorrect by today’s standards. Can be seen as a critique of both science and religion.

Finished the first story: The Time Machine.
I give it 4/5. Easy to read for being so old and becomes interesting fairly quick. Has a pretty original take on how the far-far future could look and why and in some ways a metaphor that has some truth today. The political (left) leanings of the author shine through some.

/SPOILER


The “monsters” reminded me a bit of the ghouls from fallout