THE FEARSOME ISLAND (1896) – Written by British author Albert Kinross. An unusual work with a multi-layered narrative. The entire novel was penned by Kinross, but it is one of the countless works of fiction presented as if it is a rediscovered manuscript relating the “true” adventures of Silas Fordred from the 1500s. Kinross adds another layer by explaining the sci-fi devices that Fordred could not comprehend and put down to sorcery and the supernatural.
For clarity’s sake I will present the entire narrative in order rather than double back with the science fiction rationalizations that Kinross added, as well as his fictional “research” into the mad scientist of the island – Don Diego Rodriguez.
In the late 1400s but definitely before the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Rodriguez was a wealthy but cruel blue-blooded man who gloried in torturing victims during the Inquisition. His mad genius enabled him to invent many devices so far ahead of his time that his fellow Spaniards considered them the work of Satan. Continue reading
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