The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) (edition 2007)

The Country of the Blind: A story inspired by the idiom "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". A hiker in the Andes gets trapped in an isolated valley of people who have been fully blind for 14 generations. Spoiler: he does not become king.

The Star: A formerly-unknown planet from the outskirts of our solar system crashes into Neptune. The two planets fuse and go hurtling toward the Sun. Their trajectory will not send them anywhere near Earth, except that Jupiter is in the way. Jupiter's gravitational field pulls the "star" just far enough off its path to send it toward Earth.

The New Accelerator: A man invents a "medicine" that allows the user to speed up, to the point where the world seems frozen around them. He and his colleague take some and see what happens. The interesting part of this story, to me, was that although they intended that the medicine be used for time-saving and scholarly purposes, they fully admitted that it could be used to commit crimes, but they decided they would sell it anyway and that would be someone else's problem. That certainly wouldn't happen today!

The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes: A scientist has an accident with an electromagnet, and can only see a tropical beach and the ocean, though he is actually in a laboratory in London.

Under the Knife: A man worries about a surgery he is going to have, sure he is going to die. During the surgery he has an out-of-body experience.

The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper: On Nov 10, 1931, Mr. Brownlow accidentally gets a newspaper from Nov 10, 1971. He tells his friend about what he sees (and doesn't see) in it. This story was particularly excellent, as half the fun of reading Wells is his prophecies about the future. ( )

A collection of 33 short stories, some excellent, some ok, and some plain pointless. It is presented as a book of science-fiction but some of the stories are simply observations on life and not sci-fi at all. Of the remaining, I'd particularly recommend "the flowering of the strange orchid", "the man who could work miracles", "the empire of the ants", and "the country of the blind". Very hard to rate - some stories would get a 4, others a 1/2, so I'll go midway with 2 1/2 ( )

http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0609221.txt

A fairly substantial chunk of Wells' short stories, and it appears that basically they have included all of the best, here, so a good option if you don't want to wade through the complete variety.

Country of the Blind : THE JILTING OF JANE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE CONE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE STOLEN BACILLUS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE AVU OBSERVATORY - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : AEPYORNIS ISLAND - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES. - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS. - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE MOTH - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : UNDER THE KNIFE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE SEA RAIDERS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE OBLITERATED MAN - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE PLATTNER STORY - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE RED ROOM - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE PURPLE PILEUS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE CRYSTAL EGG - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE STAR - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : A VISION OF JUDGMENT - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE NEW ACCELERATOR - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE MAGIC SHOP - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE DOOR IN THE WALL - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND - H. G. Wells
Country of the Blind : THE BEAUTIFUL SUIT - H. G. Wells

No good.

2 out of 5

Too hot here.

3 out of 5

Anarchy plague hard to swallow.

3.5 out of 5

Hothouse leech.

3.5 out of 5

Big flying thing I think.

3.5 out of 5

Big egg hatching.

4 out of 5

Remote viewing.

3.5 out of 5

Engine sacrifice.

3.5 out of 5

Not fair to die before the end of the debate.

4 out of 5

Poison gold.

3.5 out of 5

Swap is not replacement.

3.5 out of 5

Operation scare.

3.5 out of 5

Cephalopod people eaters.

4 out of 5

Bad play.

2.5 out of 5

Other world reversal.

3 out of 5

Fear place.

4 out of 5

Magic mushies.

3 out of 5

Exam cheating.

3 out of 5

Tuning in Mars.

4 out of 5

Just a near miss, that planet going past Earth. Nothing to worry those Martians.

4 out of 5

It is really not a good idea to stop the Earth's rotation.

3.5 out of 5

Supernatural stuff seen.

2 out of 5

Deity impersonation.

3 out of 5

Snooks not for me.

2.5 out of 5

Future war visions.

3 out of 5

Puffballs, too many legs.

3.5 out of 5

Flash tonic.

3.5 out of 5

A man needs to get his physics straight when asking for supernatural dieting assistance.

4 out of 5

Genuine article here.

3.5 out of 5

Just waiting for the takeover.

4 out of 5

Other places to go.

3 out of 5

Hard to be King, no matter how many eyes.

4 out of 5

Fashion victim.

2.5 out of 5

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2008/01/country-of-blind-h-g-wells_21.html
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