Fantastyka i science-fiction
Gaston Leroux
The fascinating story about a young Swede Christine Daaé. Her father, a famous musician, dies, and she is brought up in the Paris Opera House. After a while in the opera house, she begins to hear a voice that, in the end, teaches her how to sing beautifully. The ghost is in love with the main character and is jealous of her friend, but it can only spell disaster.
The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories
Rudyard Kipling
The world of Kiplings stories is complex and rich, representing essentially an encyclopedia of the plot experience of the best English and American storytellers of the XIX century. They are characterized by psychology, innovation, which consists in introducing new layers of life into the fabric of narration, and a kind of naturalism. The lazy tourists demanding communication with people have already somewhat dulled this feeling of complacency and wide hospitality.
Robert E. Howard
Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn. Into a dim alley, one of a veritable labyrinth of mysterious winding ways, four masked figures came hurriedly from a door which a dusky hand furtively opened. They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely about them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness.
Charles Williams
Charles Williams is able to create wonderful ghostly episodes powerful moments of disclosure. In the novel The Place of the Lion, the world of feelings is depicted as an illusion simply a reflection of the real world from which it originates. This makes some absolutely fascinating scenes, as people suddenly face a reality that they cannot understand. The book raises some interesting questions about good and evil.
Otis Adelbert Kline
Otis Adelbert Kline is best known for his purported novelistic feud with Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1929, long before planetary romance became a conventional genre, he wrote Planet of Peril, a novel set on the planet Venus and written in the storytelling form of Burroughs Martian novels. He followed this with two sequels. This novel is a science-fiction adventure on a world of semi-barbaric nations, ferocious beasts, gigantic reptiles, and maidens in distress. In it, Robert Grandon of Earth exchanges his body with that of a captive Prince of the planet Venus. Of course being a earthmen he doesnt stay captive very long. Battles, swordfights, monsters, whirlwind of intrigue, danger, desperation and beautiful Queens vie for your attention as this story unfolds.
Stanley G. Weinbaum
If youre going to launch a series dedicated to the very best science fiction and fantasy writers of the century, it makes sense to start with Stanley G. Weinbaum. The Planetary Series includes ten stories set on worlds of Earths solar system following several centuries of human exploration and settlement. It features a host of fascinating alien creatures, including birdlike Martians (features in A Martian Odyssey and its sequel Valley of Dreams) and The Red Peri and the Venusian trioptes (in Parasite Planet, The Lotus Eaters). Written in the 1930s, the planetary stories were consistent with scientific understanding of the solar system at that time, as well as consistent with science fiction ideas of the planets, most notably a warm and wet jungle-like Venus. Even today, the collection remains a highly readable and enjoyable, a great example of early science fiction that exhibits the finest pulp virtues: fast action, colorful settings and characters, and terrific storytelling.
T.C. Bridges
Short and stout as he was, Pip could handle a boat with any man, and the speed with which he got the sail up and tied down the reef points was worth watching. As he finished, the great arch of cloud swept over the sun, wiping, out its bright light. Then with a roar the wind was on them.
Robert E. Howard
The Pool of the Black One is one of the original short stories starring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan becoming the captain of a pirate vessel and encountering a remote island with a mysterious pool that has powers of transmutation.