From an Amber Block (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures)
By Tom Curry
()
About this ebook
Related to From an Amber Block (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures)
Related ebooks
The Red Hand (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Green Spider (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cave of Horror (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRound the Fire Stories: 17 Tales of Terror, Suspense and Adventure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lizard God (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Damned Thing (Cryptofiction Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great White Moth (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast of the Race (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Octopus Cycle (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shining Pyramid (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRound the Fire Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Novel of the Black Seal (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Top 10 Short Stories - The Edwardian Ghost Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sign of the Spider (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Beast of Kafue (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gray Cat (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From the Darkness and the Depths (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ancient Horror (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Messenger (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Record of Currupira Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOlalla (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Queen of the Bees (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Purple Emperor (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGuards! Guards!: A Discworld Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Basil and the Cave of Cats Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Fantasy For You
The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1890 Uncensored Edition + The Expanded and Revised 1891 Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Desert: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tress of the Emerald Sea: Secret Projects, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Pirate Lord: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: [Complete & Illustrated] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Tollbooth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Talisman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Immortal Longings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Empire: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eyes of the Dragon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wizard's First Rule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Underworld: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mistborn: Secret History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for From an Amber Block (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
From an Amber Block (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) - Tom Curry
From An Amber Block
By Tom Curry
A Cryptofiction Classic
Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Introduction
The genre of cryptofiction has grown up in the shadow of its older brothers, science fiction and fantasy. While the latter two continue to move towards the mainstream of literary tastes – as evidenced by reaction to modern series such as Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire – many readers have probably never even heard of cryptofiction. Odd, when one considers that some of the most famous authors in the Western tradition have dabbled in cryptofiction, and that even today works of cryptofiction frequently feature on bestseller lists.
Cryptofiction takes its name from another, non-literary practice: cryptozoology. Cryptozoology is generally regarded as a pseudoscience by mainstream scientists, relying as it does upon anecdotal, often unverifiable evidence. However, it still boasts many enthusiasts, and continues to exert considerable artistic allure. Focused on the search for animals whose existence has not been established – who are literally kryptos, Greek for hidden
– cryptozoology traces its roots to the work of the 19th-century Dutch zoologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans (1858-1943). Oudemans’ 1892 work, The Great Sea Serpent, was a collected study of global sea serpent sightings, which hypothesised that all these serpents might stem from a previously unknown species of giant seal.
Around the same time that Oudemans’ work came to prominence, cryptozoology experienced its early crossovers with the fiction of the day. Following in the footsteps of Jules Verne’s famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) – which featured a mysterious giant sea monster – the 1890s saw an explosion of cryptofictional short stories, such as Rudyard Kipling’s A Matter of Fact
(1892) and H. G. Wells’ The Sea Raiders
(1896). Into the 20th-century, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) centred on an expedition to a plateau of the Amazon basin where prehistoric animals continued to thrive, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot (1924) picked up a