Roarings from Further Out: Four Weird Novellas by Algernon Blackwood United by an unhealthy obsession with wanting to reach beyond their circumstances, these mad scientists are marked by their incredible capacity to alter the present, a gift that always comes at a price. These savants take many forms: there are malcontents who strive to create poisonous humans technologists obsessed with genetic splicing mesmerists interested in the way consciousness operates after death and inventors who believe in a hidden reality. Promethean Horrors presents some of the greatest mad scientists ever created, as each cautionary tale explores the consequences of pushing nature too far. Promethean Horrors: Classic Stories of Mad Scienceįrom the imaginations of Gothic short-story writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, and such later weirdists as H P Lovecraft, came one of the most complex of villains – the mad scientist. Every strain of vegetable threat (and one deadly fungus) can be found within this new collection, representing the very best tales from the u ndergrowth. Suddenly, the exotic orchid could become a curiously alluring, yet unsettlingly bloodthirsty menace the beautifully sprawling wisteria of the stately home could become anything but civilised, and the experimentation of botanists weening new shoots on their own blood could become fuel for a new genre of horticultural nightmare. Before the Demogorgon of Stranger Things and the appearance of Mario’s iconic foe the Piranha Plant, writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were exploring the lethal potential of vegetable life, inspired by new carnivorous species discovered on expeditions into the deep jungles of the world and breakthroughs in the grafting and genetics disciplines of botany.

Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the ‘killer plant’ trope in fiction, film and video games.

Glimpses of the Unknown by Mike Ashley