Emily Alder – författare

'The sea that night sang rather than chanted; all along the far-running shore a rising tide dropped thick foam, and the waves, white-crested, came steadily in with the swing of a deliberate purpose.'From foreboding cliffs and lonely lighthouses to rumbling shingles and silted estuaries, the coasts of the British Isles have stoked the imaginations of storytellers for millennia, lending a rich literary significance to these spaces between land and sea. For those who choose to explore these shores, generations of ghosts, sea-spirits, fairies and tentacled monsters come and go with the tide. This new collection of fifteen short stories, six folk tales and four poems ranging from 1789 to 1933 offers a chilling literary tour of the coasts of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man, including haunting pieces by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Bram Stoker and Charlotte Riddell.

The mysteries of our universe and a terrifying sense of the unknown are laid bare in this anthology of weird fiction. Featuring stories from Edith Nesbit, Algernon Blackwood, Robert Louis Stevenson and more, Classic Weird Stories celebrates the unsettling and the unexplainable side of life. Vividly imagined and richly described, each of these tales is a journey beyond normality. Danger lurks everywhere, and pounces at the drop of a hat in Lafcadio Hearn’s ‘Mujina’, a Japanese folk tale in which a man’s lonely night-time walk turns into a nightmare. Charlotte Riddell describes the unbridled power of evil in ‘Sandy the Tinker’, as a man is forced to make a life-or-death choice. Twisted minds conduct experiments on themselves and others in Edith Nesbit and Robert Louis Stevenson’s fiction, while other bizarre, paranormal experiences have onlookers struggling to believe what their instincts tell them. In Ambrose Bierce’s ‘The Damned Thing’, a sceptical jury stand around the corpse of a man who died in suspicious circumstances. For the terrified witness, words fail to convey exactly what he saw . . .Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning pocket-sized classics. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is compiled and introduced by Dr Emily Alder.

This timely book explores what might be termed ‘Gothic science fiction’ from 1980 to 2010. This designation may at first appear contradictory, as the Gothic’s connotations of the irrational and supernatural seem to conflict with the rational foundations of science fiction. However, this collection demonstrates that the two categories in fact overlap and intersect in creatively and critically fruitful ways. Understanding texts of this period by means of this hybrid category allows a fresh examination of their engagement with the dramatic socio-economic changes – in communication technology, medical science, globalization, and global politics – that have transformed the way we live, and for which Gothic science fiction texts provide compelling narrative modes.The essays in this collection reflect the current willingness among researchers to explore interpretations across genre, form, and discipline, as well as revealing a buoyant field of research in contemporary Gothic and science fiction studies. The collection ranges across narrative media (including literature, film, graphic novels and trading card games) and across genres, taking in horror, science fiction, the Gothic, the New Weird and more. The essays explore questions of genre, medical science, gender, biopower and capitalism, demonstrating the ways in which Gothic science fiction texts stage contemporary concerns around power, anxiety, resistance and capital.

This timely book explores what might be termed 'Gothic science fiction' of the last three decades. This designation may at first appear contradictory, as the Gothic's connotations of the irrational and supernatural seem to conflict with the rational foundations of science fiction. However, this collection demonstrates that the two categories in fact overlap and intersect in creatively and critically fruitful ways. Understanding texts of this period by means of this hybrid category allows a fresh examination of their engagement with the dramatic socio-economic changes - in communication technology, medical science, globalization, and global politics - that have transformed the way we live, and for which Gothic science fiction texts provide compelling narrative modes. The essays in this collection reflect the current willingness among researchers to explore interpretations across genre, form, and discipline, as well as revealing a buoyant field of research in contemporary Gothic and science fiction studies.The collection ranges across narrative media (including literature, film, graphic novels and trading card games) and across genres, taking in horror, science fiction, the Gothic, the New Weird and more. The essays explore questions of genre, medical science, gender, biopower and capitalism, demonstrating the ways in which Gothic science fiction texts stage contemporary concerns around power, anxiety, resistance and capital.

This book explores how nineteenth-century science stimulated the emergence of weird tales at the fin de siècle, and examines weird fiction by British writers who preceded and influenced H. P. Lovecraft, the most famous author of weird fiction. From laboratory experiments, thermodynamics, and Darwinian evolutionary theory to psychology, Theosophy, and the ‘new’ physics of atoms and forces, science illuminated supernatural realms with rational theories and practices. Changing scientific philosophies and questioning of traditional positivism produced new ways of knowing the world—fertile borderlands for fictional as well as real-world scientists to explore. Reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) as an inaugural weird tale, the author goes on to analyse stories by Arthur Machen, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, William Hope Hodgson, E. and H. Heron, and Algernon Blackwood to show how this radical fantasy mode can be scientific, and how sciences themselves were often already weird.

This book explores how nineteenth-century science stimulated the emergence of weird tales at the fin de siècle, and examines weird fiction by British writers who preceded and influenced H. P. Lovecraft, the most famous author of weird fiction. From laboratory experiments, thermodynamics, and Darwinian evolutionary theory to psychology, Theosophy, and the ‘new’ physics of atoms and forces, science illuminated supernatural realms with rational theories and practices. Changing scientific philosophies and questioning of traditional positivism produced new ways of knowing the world—fertile borderlands for fictional as well as real-world scientists to explore. Reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) as an inaugural weird tale, the author goes on to analyse stories by Arthur Machen, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, William Hope Hodgson, E. and H. Heron, and Algernon Blackwood to show how this radical fantasy mode can be scientific, and how sciences themselves were often already weird.