Kzradock the Onion Man and the Spring-Fresh Methuselah: From the Notes of Dr. Renard de Montepensier by Louis Levy, translated from the German translation by W. C. Bamberger (Borgo Press/Wildside Press, 2010 / Wakefield Press, 2017).
Summary: “Originally published in Danish in 1910, Kzradock the Onion Man and the Spring-Fresh Methuselah is a fevered pulp novel that reads like nothing else of its time: an anomaly within the tradition of the Danish novel, and one that makes for a startlingly modern read to this day. Combining elements of the serial film, detective story, and gothic horror novel, Kzradock is a surreal foray into psychoanalytic mysticism.
Opening in a Parisian insane asylum where Dr. Renard de Montpensier is conducting hypnotic séances with the titular Onion Man, the novel escalates quickly with the introduction of battling detectives, violent murders, and a puma in a hallucinating movie theater before shifting to the chalk cliffs of Brighton. It is there that the narrator must confront a ghost child, a scalped detective, a schizophrenic skeleton, a deaf-mute dog, and a manipulative tapeworm in order to properly confront his own sanity and learn the spiritual lesson of the human onion.”- Wakefield Press copy
Review: The Complete Review
Stand-alone stories
“The Good Ring” by Svend Ǻge Madsen, translated by Carl Malmberg (View from Another Shore: European Science Fiction, 1974).
A magic wishing-ring story with SF trappings; a sort of alternate worlds fable in which a man is given the choice of which world he will live in.
“Planet for Sale” by Niels E. Nielsen, translated by Sam Lundwall (The Best from the Rest of the World, 1976).
A story about the a capture of a tiny, living, and technologically-sophisticated planet that a spaceship crew instantly nicknames “Lilliput”.
“Aruna” by Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff, translated by Joe F. Randolph (Terra SF: The Year’s Best European SF, 1981).
Neutzsky-Wulff (b. 1949) was an occultist and writer of science fiction novels with an underlying kabbalistic structure…in N-W’s view, our perception of reality and the transcendant realm is a purely cognitive phenomenon.”
“Mikey Turns Three” by Merete Kruuse, translated by Joe F. Randolph (Terra SF II, 1983).
Kruuse (1932-2000) “wrote a sort of down-to-earth SF, often from the everyday perspective of domestic women.”- from the Introduction to Sky City
“Mnemosyne’s Children” by Svend Ǻge Madsen, translated by Johan Heje (The Road to Science Fiction 6, 1998).
“A Blue and Cloudless Sky” by Bernhard Ribbeck, translated by Niels Dalgaard (The SFWA European Hall of Fame, 2007).
“A time paradox story about a planet called Nakorza that was settled some generations before on the recommendation of a solitary explorer, but by chance the settlers were sent back through time on their journey to Nakorza. Now is the time when that explorer is actually conducting his survey, and yet an astronomical event, the Crown of Stars, is threatening the imminent destruction of all life on the planet. Why did the surveyor recommend settlement knowing that the planet’s destruction was near? And can the circle of time be broken?”
“The Aquanauts” by Charlotte Weitze, translated by Klaus Æ. Mogensen (Creatures of Glass and Light, 2007).
A story about travelling into a sub-ice-Antarctic lake.
“Flying Fish (Prometheus)” by Vilhelm Bergsøe,translated by Dwight R. Decker (Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, 2010).
“A great example of proto-steampunk from Verne’s day and, in its progressive politics, a generally progressive stance, an antidote to the reactionary approaches taken by the Edisonades of that time period.” – from the Introduction
“The Amputated Arms,” by Vilhelm Bergsøe, translated by Julian Hawthorne (The Short Story Project, 2018).
A work of late-19th-century gothic horror depicting the tensions between science and the supernatural.
