A COLLECTION by H. G. Wells
PUBLICATION DATE  September 2026
COVER ART & INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS  Pete Von Sholly
INTRODUCTION  S. T. Joshi
PAGES 130
EDITION Jacketed Hardcover limited to 100 copies signed by S. T. Joshi and Pete Von Sholly
ISBN  978-1-80394-608-5

Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) needs no introduction to the devotees of science fiction. The remarkable burst of writing that constitutes the first decade and a half of his literary career—chiefly from 1895 to about 1910—is virtually unparalleled in the history of imaginative fiction. But his status as a significant writer of weird fiction is not fully recognised. And yet, several of those very novels that established his reputation in science fiction—especially The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898)—are laced with terror and gruesomeness. The same can be said for his bountiful short stories, gathered in five collections from The Stolen Bacillus (1895) to The Country of the Blind (1911). We present a selection of the best of these stories in this volume.

CONTENTS

• Introduction by S. T. Joshi
• The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
• In the Avu Observatory
• Æpyornis Island
• Pollock and the Porroh Man
• The Red Room
• The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham
• In the Abyss
• The Sea-Raiders
• The Star
• The Valley of Spiders
• The Empire of the Ants