The Purple Cloud de M. P. Shiel

The Purple Cloud

M. P. Shiel

The Purple Cloud

M.P. Shiel

Classic Weird Fiction

The story, a recording of a medium's meditation over the future writing of the text, details the narrator, Adam Jeffson, on an expedition to the North Pole during the 20th century on board the Boreal.

Jeffson's fiancee, the Countess Clodagh, poisons her own cousin in order to secure a place on the ship for Jeffson, because the expedition was known to be one of the best ever planned. A millionaire who died some years previously had provided in his will for the payment of $175,000,000 to the first person to stand at the North Pole.

Before Jeffson leaves, he hears a sermon by a Scottish priest, named Mackay, speaking against Polar research, calling the failure of all previous expeditions the will of God, and prophesying a terrible fate for those who attempt to go against God's will. Jeffson at the same time remembers his meeting with a man who claimed that the universe is a place of strife between vague "powers," "The White" and "The Black," for dominance.

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Notă biografică

Matthew Phipps Shiell (1865 - 1947) - known as M. P. Shiel - was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name. He is remembered mostly for supernatural horror and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901, revised 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel. Around 1899-1900 Shiel conceived a loosely linked trilogy of novels which were described by David G. Hartwell in his introduction to the Gregg Press edition of The Purple Cloud as possibly the first future history series in science fiction. Each was linked by similar introductory frame purporting to show that the novels were visions of progressively more distant futures glimpsed by a clairvoyant in a trance. Notebook I of the series had been plotted at least by 1898, but would not see print until published as The Last Miracle (1906). Notebook II became The Lord of the Sea (1901), which was recognized by contemporary readers as a critique of private ownership of land based on the theories of Henry George.