"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
There once was a rich merchant named Marko—a stingier fellow never lived! One day he went out for a stroll. As he went along the road he saw a beggar—an old man, who sat there asking for alms—“Please to give, O ye Orthodox, for Christ’s...
The light had been put out on the stairs. Usually, when he returned late to spend the night in his rooms, he found it burning. Now he had to make his way slowly, striking matches as he went up the old dingy enclosed stairs. It was...
As my readers know by now, I often treat science fiction as a testing ground for architectural imagination. Not because it delivers ready-made templates for cities of the future, but because it probes the limits of what we think cities can be. Readers in architecture...
I was riding along one autumn day through a certain wooded portion of New York State, when I came suddenly upon an old stone house in which the marks of age were in such startling contrast to its unfinished condition that I involuntarily stopped my...
Nest revived during the warm summer weather. Edward came to see her, and stayed the allotted quarter of an hour; but he dared not look her in the face. She was, indeed, a cripple: one leg was much shorter than the other, and she halted...
Last season, Milan hosted at Palazzo Reale a long-overdue retrospective of what quickly became one of my favourite contemporary artists, alongside Niki de Saint-Phalle: Leonor Fini. I wrote about it here. Saint-Phalle herself had been hosted at MUDEC in the same period (see here). This Autumn,...
Another spooky story in two parts by Elizabeth Gaskell. Of a hundred travellers who spend a night at Tre-Madoc, in North Wales, there is not one, perhaps, who goes to the neighbouring village of Pen-Morfa. The new town, built by Mr Maddocks, Shelley's friend, has taken...
When Space Turns to Horror Stanisław Lem has often been described as a visionary of science fiction, but to call The Invincible simply “sci-fi” feels inadequate. Lem doesn’t write speculative adventures of exploration and discovery: he writes existential horror. Solaris is, at its core, a ghost...
Today, we feature another spooky story by Marjorie Bowen. When Maitland first saw the house the poppies were in full bloom; he had never before seen so many blooming together; the field was a sheet of scarlet flecked with green, right up to the hedge of...
The trees were in full leaf, a heavy south wind was blowing, and there was a loud murmur among the new leaves. The people noticed it, for it was the first time that year that the trees had so murmured in the wind. The spring...
