A DARWINIAN SCHOONER (1893) – Written by William Alden. With so many fans of the various Planet of the Apes movies still around, I figured it was a good time to post a review of this story that’s in a similar spirit.
The tale starts on board a 22-man ship called the Jane G Mather. This vessel is 500 miles or so east of Cape Saint Roque in Brazil when the 2nd Mate – Mr Samuels – catches sight of a schooner barely a mile off.
The schooner has full sails on but keeps listing to and fro almost as if its crew were novices or drunk. After two hours the Captain – Bill Simmons – takes an interest in the careering ship in the distance since it is clearly a potential threat to sea traffic.
Captain Simmons has Mr Samuels round up an away team consisting of Samuels himself and four other men. They are to board the errant vessel and advise the captain to get his crew and his ship under better control. Soon, Samuels and his four men pull alongside the schooner and are shocked to see nothing but large monkeys – baboons, Samuels guesses – aboard the ship.
The 2nd Mate of the Mather is unnerved at the sight and by how calmly the baboons watch him and the rest of the away team board the ship. The primates make no sound and do not jump around or otherwise behave like real monkeys, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Continue reading
THE ABYSMAL INVADERS (1929) – Written by Edmond Hamilton. This is a nice mish-mash of elements that are part Creature Feature, part Doctor Who and part Jurassic Park. Hamilton gets bashed as a hack but his stories are harmless fun. 
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE (1818) – Written under the pseudonym “D” this work was published the same year as Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. The story is presented as written observations of the world in October and November of the year 2318. 
THE BRICK MOON (1872) – Written by Edward Everett Hale, best known for The Man without a Country. This novella started out as a serialized story published in 1869 in the October, November and December issues of Atlantic Monthly. A follow-up installment, titled Life in the Brick Moon, was published in the February 1870 issue. 
The story begins in the 1840s when Frederic Ingham, the tale’s narrator, and his college friends Orcutt and Halliburton plan a dream project which winds up taking decades to fulfill – a manmade artificial satellite, the first recorded in science fiction stories. 
THE END OF AN EPOCH (1901) – Written by A. Lincoln Green, this novel about a world-threatening disease presented the tale of brilliant young Adam Godwin, a recent Oxford graduate who pursues his interest in microbiology. During the course of his research into antitoxins, Adam becomes aware of the controversial Dr. Azrael Falk. 
Ultimately, Adam starts neglecting Evelyn to the point that she lays down an ultimatum: Godwin must choose between her and his research. Adam chooses his research, so the engagement is ended, and the willful Evelyn joins her father’s expedition to the North Pole. 
THE KE WHONKUS PEOPLE aka A Tale of the North Pole Country (1890) – The author John O. Greene was American, but the main character in this story is a Canadian named Sampson De Lilly. Sampson survives a shipwreck and is picked up by a steamship headed for the North Pole. 
THE CAPTIVITY OF THE PROFESSOR (1901) – Written by A. Lincoln Green, a presumed pen name, this story was first published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in the February 1901 isssue. 
THE NEW NORTHLAND (1915) – Written by Louis Pope Gratacap. The main character is explorer Alfred Erickson, who recruited a few associates of varied backgrounds to join him in a search to prove the existence of an isolated warm weather land mass in the far north. 
THE SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURES OF BARON MUENCHHAUSEN (1915-1917) – Written by the iconic Hugo Gernsback in the years before he launched his own publication, these sci-fi tales presented the 1700s Baron being alive and having wild adventures. (The cover spelling does not match the one Gernsback used.)
THE EMPEROR OF THE AIR (1910) – Written by George Glendon, this is a story about two visionaries – the German-American tycoon Hans Kreutzer and the Italian inventor Anatole Lonari. 
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