Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stories from 'The Sun' Illustrated recovers thirty stories Edward Page Mitchell published largely without a byline in New York's The Sun. Written across the late nineteenth century, the anthology shows speculative ideas appearing in newspaper fiction before many became standard genre devices.
Its scientific inventions range from pneumatic travel, domestic electrical transmission, and suspended animation to invisibility, time machines, thinking computers, cyborgs, teleportation, and faster-than-light motion. Social speculation accompanies the machinery through stories that imagine women's voting and interracial marriage. The fantastic pieces turn toward ghosts, the Devil, animated objects, and other occult disturbances.
Named selections include "The Tachypomp," "The Soul Spectroscope," "The Man Without a Body," "The Ablest Man in the World," "The Senator's Daughter," and "The Clock That Went Backward." An introduction places the fiction within The Sun and Mitchell's editorial career. Placed together, the stories reveal recurring concerns that were originally dispersed, anonymous, and shaped for a fast-moving urban newspaper. The illustrated anthology also makes it easier to compare mechanical prophecy with supernatural unease across three decades. The collection serves readers interested in early American science fiction, fantasy, and the history of popular media, revealing how technological prediction, satire, horror, and social possibility shared the compact space of a daily newspaper.
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