Karl's Reading List

Published by Pan Books Ltd/Fabbri Publishing Ltd: Barcelona, Spain, 1992. First published 1895. One of HG Wells' most famous stories, The Time Machine is an 1895 novella that popularised the term 'time machine' itself! The novella is a very easy read, and not quite as grim as some of HG Wells' stories - though it still manages to be mildly cynical about the development of humankind. Our protagonist, only ever referred to as 'The Time Traveller', is an inventor who, at the beginning of the book, hosts some dinners, where he firstly demonstrates a model time machine, and then - arriving late and in quite a bad state to the second dinner - tells his guests (including our un-named narrator) the tale of time travelling that makes up the rest of the main narrative. The Time Traveller tells how he travelled forward to the year 802,701, where he encountered two species descended from modern humans: the innocent child-like Eloi, and the subterranean cannibalistic Morloc...

Originally published 1896. Audiobook released by LibriVox 06-02-2014. Narrated by Bob Neufeld. Well, it seems that audiobooks  have  been  easier to get  through lately! This classic science fiction novel is a fairly dark story, telling of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked survivor who ends up stranded on the titular island where Dr Moreau is experimenting on animals, turning them into humanoid beings through a combination of extreme surgery/vivisection and hypnosis. The creatures are able to talk and reason (to a degree) and consider themselves humans, living by a series of strict laws to try and keep them from reverting to their instinctive animal behaviour. As time goes on, however, it seems that all of the animals will indeed inevitably lose their 'humanity.'  Wells seems to naturally gravitate towards the darker elements of humanity in his work, and this is no exception. Moreau - who is, to be fair, treated with some degree of horror by Prendick - sees himself...

Published by LibriVox. Originally published 1959. Audiobook released 24-06-2012 by LibriVox. Narrated by Richard Kilmer. Donald Wollheim is not an author I had ever heard of, but the book jumped out when I was looking for another audiobook option. The Secret of the Ninth Planet is a fairly straight-forward old-school science fiction novel, with Burl Denning, our young protagonist, getting caught up in a race to destroy a number of "sun-tappers" that have been placed on various planets and moons throughout our solar system by an as-yet unidentified extraterrestrial enemy. Denning was exposed to an 'electric charge' when he and his father were delegated the responsibility of destroying the first discovered sun-tapper (the Earth one), and as such he may be the only person who can turn off the remaining sun-tappers. The story is partially an excuse to talk about each planet in the solar system and its make-up (at least as believed to be the case in 1959), and includes ext...

Published by HarperVoyager: London, England, 2008 (1953). As the first of the two epigraphs at the beginning of the book tells us, Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book-paper catches fire. Opening the book with this information not only gives us pertinent information about the plot we're about to read - the story follows the journey of Guy Montag, employed as a "fireman" whose job it is to burn books in a society that has outlawed their existence - but also subtly (to my thinking) comments on the stupidity of such a law; where can someone learn that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which a book burns if they haven't read it somewhere? First written as a novel in 1953 (and apparently published in early issues of Playboy !), the novel reads like a condemnation of our modern entertainment-driven society written before much of that society even existed! Like Jules Verne predicting submarines and rocket ships, Ray Bradbury predicts a world where peopl...