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Do you know much about the philosophy of the hypnotic trance? That was the relation between us--hypnotist and subject. She had been under another man before my time, suffered from tic of the fifth nerve, had had most of her teeth drawn before I saw her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the nerve on the left side by external scission. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Prototypical "Last Man" story
It's an experiment that can never be performed, but it's worth thought anyway: how would a man act if there were no one to answer to? Adam Jeffson is that man, and this is his world.

Back in 1901, when this was written, parts of the earth's surface remained unmapped, including the north pole. Jeffson is part of the expedition to reach that pole - as sole survivor, he finds it (an actual upright pole, it turns out), and struggles back to civilzation to claim his reward. No one is left to give it, though. During the months of his trek, catastrophic volcanoes unleashed poisonous gasses that cover the world, killing off every bird, beast, and man, except for him alone. At first, he scours the globe in search of other survivors. After years of solitary confinement in the world-wide jail, his civilized spirit fails. He turns to the decadence of drugs and pointless wealth. Decadence turns to active nihilism, a self-declared mission of arson and destruction, a modern Nero who blasts and burns entire cities for his own amusement. Then ... well, I'll try to avoid spoilers, but his name is Adam and 1901 was not an era that tolerated wholly unhappy endings.

Just reading history books won't tell you how nervous that era was. Political tremors were building up to the quake that triggered the first world war. Medicine hadn't made the inroads against disease that modern generations assume, as the 1918 Spanish flu would soon show. The earth itself could turn against mankind, as the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa had shown. Sheil captured that sense of fragility, and his words preserve that sense for today's reader.

This book also preserves the style of writing that prevailed back then, something that might be even less familiar today. Think of the effort that moviemakers put into the special effects of today's media, then realize that writing was that era's medium. The pyrotechnics are all there, but in the florid vocabulary of the writing.

The story is a fair one, and could work well if recast as a modern adventure movie. More than that, though, "The Purple Cloud" records the fears, the values, and the literary style at the turn of the last century. It succeeds at many levels.

-- wiredweird

Dense Prose, Good Story
I got halfway through this book some six months ago and then just put it down for a while.Finally picked it back up and finished it today, and I must admit, for being an ancestor of the post-apocalyptic, last-man-on-earth genre, it carries some unique qualities.

On the downside, this was just a difficult read, period.The prose was incredibly dense: sometimes an entire page was but one run-on sentence!No paragraph breaks, few semicolons, and even fewer commas.I tried to make an audio version of this book, and found I could not pitch the sentences properly, since I could not see their end!

I'm quite practiced at reading, writing, and speaking, always at the head of my class even into the graduate level.That being said, this book almost *wasn't* English, not as modern-day Americans understand it, at least.I have a rather sizable vocabulary, but this was the first book to leave me hard-pressed to determine what he was talking about half the time:

"I paced between the oak pwes of the nave - massive stalls they are, separated by Corinthian pilasters ...some little angels with strangely human faces, Greuze-like, supporting the nerves of the apse" and so on.

Honestly, I'd swear he was making up the words half the time.Sentences ran far too long to keep the thread of things easily; I took to scanning over his florid descriptions but cautiously, for the most obscure little phrase within any block of text could trigger something that I would then be unable to understand.

That being said, I really liked the book.Along with "Earth Abides," these are the only two books that take their time looking at a world where man just... disappeared.Most post-apocalyptic stories talk about some war-ravaged earth, or one wherein civilization had been thousands of years ago.In stories like that, Earth might as well be Mars for the reader.

Contrarily, "The Purple Cloud" and "Earth Abides" allow the reader to leisurely stroll through a world that, in one sense, looks exactly like always, yet in another, feels inverted, nightmarish in such ordinary alienness.An emptied - yet undamaged - world always feels far more gripping and interesting to me.In this, Shiel most certainly provides.

Like I said, getting through his wording is like jogging in sand, and the guy he describes is pretty bizarre, wacked, and selfish, but I still find it a beautiful book, especially as the reader is slowly drawn from the lifelong nightmare of the protagonist's depravity into a beauty he'd never have guessed, let alone dared believe in.

Definitely a must-read, a keeper, and a read-again.

Excellent horror/scifi
Lovecraft mentioned this novel in his "Supernatural Horror In Literature" essay, and had good things to say about it.The novel deserves the good words.The first half, before our hero finds the inevitable woman to complete him, is really dark.A man alone, totally alone, with only corpses around him.I think that would send me "over the edge", too.Shiel captures the pathos of the situation well.Unlike Lovecraft, though, I like the "romantic" ending.At least the human race will not die out.This is well worth reading.

Lush,imaginative use of language.
make this book really worth reading. I find the descriptions of an empty world chilling, the familiarity with some of the places(in England) making the story at once believable yet terribly strange to me. Shiel is a romantic, bringing the story to an optimistic end for our poor protagonist (hasn't the poor guy suffered enough...!), even though it seems like Leda gets the short end of the stick once more(Victorian women were made of stern stuff!).In the end it is Shiel's rich and unusual descriptive style that really made this book stand out for meand I look on it as something original, captivating and totally refreshing compared to the lame language used in a lot of modern fiction.

A post-apocalyptic tale from the early 1900s
No one has yet succeeded in reaching the North Pole, and a new British expedition is mounted. As our protagonist, Adam, returns from the arctic, all the humans and many of the animals he encounters are dead. Adam travels all over the world, looking for other living people and, understandably, going kind of bonkers.

I wanted to like this book more. Early in the book, Adam finds himself in many morally challenging situations, but he has these voices in his head that more or less compel him to act in certain ways, so the reader is prevented from really entering into any moral struggles with him. I liked the writing, but each place Adam goes is essentially like the rest--everyone's dead--and I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Near the end, something finally did, but then I mostly wanted to slap Adam around for being so dense.

Maybe I'm just jaded from reading too many post-apocalyptic stories and that's why I'm not more enthusiastic about this book. If you're new to this sort of story, you might find this book to be a powerful exploration of loneliness and the meaning of human society and human life. A similar but much better post-apocalyptic novel is Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." ... Read more

Product Description
August Derleth said M.P. Shiel was ". . . the Grand Viscount of the Grotesque . . . [with a] refulgently fanciful imagination and magical command of the English language." Arthur Machen said, "Here is a wilder wonderland than Poe ever dreamt of . . . It is Poe, perhaps, but Poe with an unearthly radiance." SHAPES IN THE FIRE is an extraordinary collection of Shiel's work: don't miss it. ... Read more

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A Wilder Wonderland Than Poe Ever Dreamt Of! --Arthur Machen. Shiel's second collection of stories, noted both for their eerie quality and their shining example of English Decadence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Don't Waste Your Time
I just finished reading The Purple Cloud and decided to see what others had written about it. What did I miss, if anything, in my reading.

I missed nothing. What little merit the book brings (the discussion of two opposing forces - white and black - in the universe) is so buried in pointless, overdrawn, repetitive, monotonous, utterly boring writing that I am amazed that this remains in print much less on any serious horror or SF reader's "must read" list.

I cannot recommend reading The Purple Cloud for anyone unless they have a VERY good reason to slog through the pages. A reason like a PhD thesis or maybe a bet. It would have to be a serious bet before I would waste my reading time with it again.

I think H.P. Lovecraft was being nice when he wrote The Purple Cloud as "falling little short of actual majesty" and "a distinct letdown".

It must have been the little mention and use of poet Machen in the book which made Lovecraft be so kind. ... Read more

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"July 14.--Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he would forgive, he has taken one small parcel with him--and is gone! ... Read more

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What part did the burglars play in the tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance? The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories propounded. But no theory explained all the points. The ferment, however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life on the gallows." ... Read more

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I asked with what motives, and in what particulars, the malice of his mother and aunt manifested itself. He replied that there was, he believed, no specific motive, but only a determined malevolence, involuntary and fated; and that the respect in which it manifested itself was to be found in the multiplied prayers and commands with which, for years, they had importuned him to seek again the far hold of his ancestors. ... Read more

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And Including About Myself By M. P. Shiel. ... Read more

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THE LAST MIRACLE TOWARDS the end of May 1900 the writer received as noteworthy a letter and packet of papers as it has been his lot to examine. They came from a good friend of mine, a Dr A. ister Browne, hI.A.Oxon., F.R.C.P., whom, as it happened that for some years I had been living mostly in France, and robne being in Norfolk, I had not seen during my visits to London. Moreover, as we were both bad correspondents, only three notes had passed between us in the course of those years. But in the May of 1900 there reached me the letter-and the packet-to which I refer, the packet consisting of four note-books full of shorthand, the letter also pencilled in shorthand, and this letter, together with the note-book marked 1 now publish. The note-book marked 11. has already appeared under the title of The Lord of the Sea, and that marked 111. under the title of The Purple Cloud, each in three languages while that marked IV. has been judged unsuitable to publication. The following is Brownes letter -- THE LAST MIRACLE DEAR OLD NAN,-I have been thinking of you, wishing that you were here to give me a last squeeze of the hand before I-go. Four days ago I felt a soreness in the throat, so in passing by old Johnsons burgery at Selbridge, I asked him to have a look at me. He muttered some- thing about membranous laryngitis which made me smile but by the time I reached home I was hoarse, and not smiling before night I had stridor. I at once telegraphed to London for Horsford, and he and Johnson have been opening my inside and burning it with the cautery, so I am breathing easier now, and it is wonderful how little I suffer but I am too old a hand not to know whats what the bronchi are involved-too lar, and, as a matter of fact, there isnt any hope. Horsford is still fondly hoping to add me to his successful-tracheotomy statistics but I have bet him not, and the consolation of my death will bc the beating of a specialist in his own line. I have been arranging some of my affairs, and remembered these note-books which I intended letting you have long ago but you know my habit of putting things off, and, moreover, the lady was alive from whose mouth I took down the words. She is now dead, and, as a man of books, you should bc intcrcsted, if you can manage to read them. I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little state of languor....... ... Read more

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:f;CHAPTER IIIRUMOURS OF WARAs the year wore on, some of the International difficulties centring round Kiao-Chau, Port Arthur, and Hainan reopened. In England more than all the old unrest revived.What added to this unrest was the fact that some of the items of the rapidly-succeeding batches of news were quite inexplicable.From the beginning of the year it had been known that Germany had not made so brilliant a bargain in the acquisition of Kiao-Chau as she had imagined. The territory placed under her ' sovereign rights, had been strictly limited by China, and granted only as a ' lease., When Prince Henry of Prussia arrived with the Deutschland and Gefion, he found that there were no ' laurels, to win, and nobody at whom to strike out with his absurd mailed fist.Moreover, on much the same terms as Germany obtained Kiao - Chau, and, later in the year, Russia obtained Port Arthur, Britain obtained Wei-hai-Wei and Mirs Bay.What, then, was the surprise of the world, including the Germans themselves, when, in the middle of December, came the news that China had ceded a large additional region to the Kaiser, absolutely without conditions !There was not a single brain in Europe which could divine the motive of this virtual gift.At this time Li Hung Chang, recalled to power by the Emperor at the beginning of the year, was still at the head of affairs in Pekin. But in the short space of two months he had acquired the habit of taking no step without the suggestion of the new element in Chinese politics, the far-seeing OrientalEuropean, the much-toiling member of the Tsung-li-Yamen, the omniscient Yen How. Already Yen had swung himself into the position of the virtual ruler of China.Yen How seemed to Li Hung Chang, haunted as the old statesman had always... ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more