Here is a book that I’ve owned for a pretty long time and finally got around to reading! Perhaps now, I can make another book haul (or maybe not, I have been so good in not buying more books or teacups).

Frankenstein Dreams is a collection of Victorian science fiction stories, some excerpted from longer works but most from actual short stories, with each story is preceded by a couple of pages of introduction about the author. Some of the authors here were unknown to me, but others are famous and will probably ring a bell with most people: Mary Shelley (no prizes for what is excerpted), Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, E. Nesbit, and Robert Louis Stevenson are some of the most famous authors whose works are in this collection.

After reading this, I’ve noticed two similarities in the stories. One is applicable to most, if not all the tales: sentences feel longer and so do the paragraphs. Victorian writers are not afraid of making us pay attention – this is not the snappy thrillers that I’ve been reading lately! The other similarity is less generalised: the use of the “found” narrative and faux-nonfiction, with stories disguised as accounts of real-life incidents. It appears in slightly more than a couple of stories and I’m not sure if it’s a preference of the editor or because Victorian authors really did prefer this style of story-telling. Either way, it’s something for me to look out for if I’m reading more Victorian fiction.

I generally enjoyed all the stories here, but a few that stood out to me were:

• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Alan Poe – I’m not sure if this is a horror story dressed as science fiction or science-fiction dressed as horror but either way, though this features the faux-scientific mesmerism, it creeped me out.
• The Clock that Went Backward by Edward Page Mitchell – An interesting time travel story!
• A Wife Manufactured to Order by Alice W. Fuller – This reminded me a little of the manga Absolute Boyfriend, but less light-hearted. Here, a bachelor decides to order the perfect wife and promptly falls in love with her
• Mysterious Disappearance by Ambrose Bierce – This isn’t really a story in that there’s no premise, middle, or end, but it is interesting and a good example of a story/phenomenon “told” through newspaper reports
• The Thames Valley Catastrophe by Grant Allen – A fairly straightforward catastrophe story where London is engulfed by a river of lava. If you enjoy classic tales of nature trying to kill us (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow, Volcano), you’ll enjoy this
• The Hall Bedroom by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Another sci-fi story with elements of horror, this one, for some reason, reminded me of nosleep stories.

As you can probably tell, I enjoyed this collection. I think it’s nice that it combines both the big-names of Victorian fiction with some relatively unknown authors. While I’m generally not the biggest science-fiction reader, I thought this was a fun book and I liked that I could read a story or two every morning since everything works as a standalone.