Frank Stockton

A retired middle-aged gentleman and his wife take a long walk, arm-in-arm, many miles, up hills, across fields, with a laden knapsack and a heavy picnic basket, and yet they are completely at ease because of the gentleman's invention, a negative gravity device, which they carry to lighten their weight. He uses the device to help with farm work. The gentleman later uses the device on a mountain climb and amazes an unknowing Alpine-club member with his speed and agility on a difficult mountain climb in spite of his carrying a heavy load and not looking particularly strong. He realizes the invention has tremendous financial potential. However, this invention gets him into a humorous predicament and causes a problem for his family, which he resolves in an unexpected way.This light-hearted short story was first published in a collection by Frank R. Stockton entitled The Christmas Wreck and Other Stories (New York, 1886), an imaged copy of which is available at The Internet Archive.

This was the third-best selling book in the United States in 1895. It begins:"Early in the spring of the year 1884, the three-masted schooner Castor, from San Francisco to Valparaiso, was struck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The storm, which rose with frightful suddenness, was of short duration, but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. ..."The Castor was an American merchant-vessel, commanded by Captain Philip Horn, an experienced navigator of about thirty-five years of age. Besides a valuable cargo, she carried three passengers—two ladies and a boy. ..."But when the storm had passed, and the sky was clear, and the mad waves had subsided into a rolling swell, there seemed no reason to believe that any one on board the Castor would ever reach Valparaiso. The vessel had been badly strained by the wrenching of the masts, her sides had been battered by the floating wreckage, and she was taking in water rapidly. Fortunately, no one had been injured by the storm, ...."All of the row boats had been blown off of the ship, but the crew was able to retrieve two of them from the sea; and "...in less than three hours after the vessel had been struck, the two boats, containing all the crew and the passengers, besides a goodly quantity of provisions and water, and such valuables, clothing, rugs, and wraps as room could be found for, were pulling away from the wreck."The adventure thus begins, lost at sea somewhere off of the unsettled coast of Peru with only a vague idea of where they are.

A double adventure written at the end of the 19th century, somewhat in the theme of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth, telling of a submarine trip in the year 1947 to reach the North Pole and a project to examine the center of the Earth by boring a deep shaft. What they find at the core of the planet surprises the enterprising explorers.Since the book was set about 50 years into the future from when it was written, it includes some speculations on the advancement of science and technology, as the author explains in his introduction. A literary reviewer has said about this novel: "The conception was bizarre and grotesque enough, but the author developed it into a fascinating tale, incidentally injecting into it a good deal of drollery and fun. The tale shows that aspect of Stockton's genius that is inclined to the whimsical and chimerical, as well as the mechanical turn of his invention."("The Fiction of Frank R. Stockton" by Edwin W. Bowen in The Sewanee Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, July 1920, pp. 452-462)

Called the most famous riddle mystery of all time, this very short story poses a dilemma. A man is sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king's beloved daughter. Taken to the public arena, he is faced with two doors, behind one of which is a hungry tiger that will devour him. Behind the other is a beautiful lady-in-waiting, whom he will have to marry if he finds her. While the crowd waits anxiously for his decision, he sees the princess among the spectators, who points him to the door on the right with a slight movement of her hand. The lover starts to open the door and ...Did the princess save her lover's life by pointing to the door leading to the lady-in-waiting, or did she prefer to see her lover die rather than see him marry someone else?(Summary from Wikipedia.)