The Science Fiction of Mark Twain

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by David Ketterer

[Hamden, CT]
Archon Books
1984

Texts and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii

Whimsical Wonders

Petrified Man 3
Earthquake Almanac 4
A Curious Pleasure Excursion 6
The Curious Republic of Gondour 10
Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven 14

Instantaneous Communication

The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton 61
Time-Travel Contexts from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 77
Mental Telegraphy 96
Mental Telegraphy Again 112
My Platonic Sweetheart 117
From the “London Times” of 1904 127

Doubtful Speculations

“The Great Dark 139
The Secret History of Eddypus, the World-Empire 176
Sold to Satan 226
3,000 Years Among the Microbes 233

Appendixes

A. “The Mysterious Balloonist” 327
B. A Synopsis of “A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage” 331
C. “The Generation Iceberg” 334
D. Shackleford’s Ghost 335
E. “History 1,000 Years from Now” 338

Explanatory Notes 341
Selected Bibliography 381

SOURCE: Twain, Mark [pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens]. The Science Fiction of Mark Twain, edited with an Introduction & Notes by David Ketterer. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984. Republished as: Tales of Wonder. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

See also:

Twain, Mark. The American Claimant (1892).

__________. The American Claimant, foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, introduction by Bobbie Ann Mason, afterword by Peter Messent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Dreamed Life by Mark Twain

“Mark Twain kaj la trustoj (Anekdoto)”

Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century—An Anthology
[contents & links], compiled by H. Bruce Franklin

Mark Twain: Selected References & Links

Science Fiction & Utopia Research Resources: A Selective Work in Progress

‘Philosophy’ and ‘Literature’: Relationships of Genres and the Frontiers of Thought
by R. Dumain

Offsite:

“ Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”
by Mark Twain

What Is Man? and Other Stories (1906)
by Mark Twain

Mark Twain at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Mark Twain and Spinoza: A Spinozistic Commentary on Mark Twain’s What is Man?”
by Joseph B. Yesselman, (last rev. September 18, 2006)

“Mark Twain, Nietzsche, and Terrible Truths That Can Set Us Free”
by Patrick J. Keane