I really find the Russian writers of the Golden Age fascinating.

After reading two of Ivan Turgenev novels (Fathers and Sons and A House of Gentlefolk) I read a short story he wrote called Clara Militch. Turgenev really catches unpredictable human behavior so well. Currently I'm reading White Nights and The Eternal Husband (short novel) by Dostoevsky and War and Peace by Tolstoy--all excellent.

Clara Militch
http://www.online-literature.com/turgenev/2703/

The Voice in the Night
by William Hope Hodgson

This is a pretty short horror story. It's great fun to read, like his other stuff.

I noticed, pretty fast, that this story almost seems like a combination of two of his other stories. The Derelict is one of them, and I don't remember the name of the other. The other short story in question was about some sailors who fled their ship, and rowed to an island with swaying trees. The island was super scary so they didn't stay long. So, The Voice in the Night has elements of both of these short stories.

It also has become very apparent that Hodgson really liked writing stories about ships and sailing and the ocean. Boy howdy, did he ever like that stuff.

You can read the entirety of the story here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Voice_in_the_Night

The movie Matango is an adaptation of TVITN. I haven't seen the movie yet.

Galileo's Children: Tales of Science Vs. Superstition

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591023157

I first learned about this book from Skeptic Magazine. Skeptic Magazine is a very much pro-science magazine, and this book of short stories is a collection of stories of science-minded people struggling against religious-minded people. Overall, the book was ok, but not great.

I remember very little of the book, since I read it so long ago. Here is some of what I remember.

1. The Way of Cross and Dragon
by George RR Martin

You can read the entirety of the story here.

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ficti ... nd-dragon/

This is the story of Judas Iscariot. In this story, he's a way cool, upstanding guy. His history was wiped out and now people remember only cruel lies about him.

2. Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream
by James Alan Gardner

This story really caught my attention. Some religious text said, in an ambiguous manner, that humans have serpents in their heart and blood. And so, because it was religious text, people believed it uncritically.

This really struck me as exactly what goes on with real life religious text. The one that comes to mind right away is the Koran saying that salt water and fresh water don't mix. Some devout Muslims feel like they must believe it, even though it's demonstrably false.

So, some guy eventually looked at human blood under a microscope and discovered no snakes. Unfortunately, it was discovered that other people actually do have strands in their blood, which was then declared to be the snakes in question.

You can read the entirety of the story here.

http://lib.ru/INOFANT/GARDNER_J/snakes_engl.txt

Recommendation: I wasn't particularly entertained by this book, so I can't recommend it.

A Tropical Horror
by William Hope Hodgson

Another story by Hodgson. This story is good, but not spectacular. Both The Derelict and The Voice in the Night are better. This one is about a sea monster and how a ship's crew deal with that monster.

You can read the whole thing here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Tropical_Horror

Recommendation: If you like horror, you probably won't regret reading it. It's pretty short.

The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/145 ... lp_Fiction

It was a pretty good book. Not a lot in this book is memorable to me, but I enjoyed it regardless. I read it many years ago, after all. This book's stories are mostly detective and crime stuff.

Recommendation: If you like crime stuff, you'd probably like it.

The Stone Ship

by William Hope Hodgson

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Stone_Ship

This is one among many maritime tales that Hodgson wrote. This is roughly the same in style and content as his other maritime stuff. It's less monster-y than his other stuff though.

You can hear a version of it from the Canadian radio show Nightfall here:

https://archive.org/details/Nightfall-c ... e_Ship.mp3

Recommendation: Read it if you like horror.

He Walked Around the Horses
by H. Beam Piper

I found this story on my phone. I downloaded it one or more years ago. I don't remember doing any such thing and I don't remember ever hearing of this story or its author. So I read it. I was surprised at how enjoyable it was. It's a great little sci fi story. The story is about 99 pages as an ebook on my phone, which means if it was in a paperback book, it would be around 1/3 or 1/4 that length.

This story is about a British diplomat during the time of the Napoleanic wars finding himself in an alternate Earth.

Read it online at Gutenberg.

Recommendation: Read it if you like older sci fi.

The Isle of the Torturers
Clark Ashton Smith

This is a superbly written tragic story. The version that I read had a lot of errors in it, but I could understand everything except for the word "elllong". The two online dictionaries I used didn't have that word. It looks like Mr Smith liked adjectives more than Lovecraft did, because, holy moley, everything had an adjective.

Read it online

Recommendation: Read it if you feel like reading a depressing fantasy/horror story.

The Metamorphosis of the World
by Clark Ashton Smith

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/sh ... s-of-earth

This is a superbly well written horror / sci fi story.

I have found that Clark Ashton Smith's stories have a style that resembles Lovecraft's style. Since they were contemporaries, this is understandable. This particular short story doesn't resemble Lovecraft, and that's good. Compared to Smith's other stuff that I've read, this story shows a bit of stylistic maturity. I haven't read a lot of Smith's work, so I could be in for more pleasant surprises in the future.

Recommendation: If you like HP Lovecraft, WH Hodgson, or HG Wells, you'd probably like this.

EDIT: My collection of CAS stories has this story as The Metamorphosis of the World and I changed the name in this post.

asya47 wrote:I also really love old stories, more than modern ones. Thank you for the selection, I'll take note! In general, I really like to take biographies of people (not only famous ones) and analyze their life through characteristics according to the Volikov test. It helps a lot to draw conclusions on how certain qualities affect a person's life

I'm glad you enjoyed my reviews.