{"code":"fantasy","header_2":"The magical, the monstrous and the magnificent.","header_1":"The Best Fantasy Short Stories of History","description":"The best fantasy short stories of history. Read or download. A Dream of Armageddon by H. G. Wells, The Last Incantation by Clark Ashton Smith, Celephais by H. P. Lovecraft.","stories":[{"story":"a-dream-of-armageddon","description":"On a train a man meets a stranger desperate to divulge a recent series of dreams. He chronicles a surprisingly detailed adventure that unfolded over many nights, full of love and loss, paradise and war, and a dramatic end. H. G. Wells packs an entire odyssey into this 10,000 word short story, and it bursts at the seams with imagination."},{"story":"the-last-incantation","description":"A philosophical fable from the usually weird and horrid mind of Clark Ashton Smith, friend and colleague of the equally weird and horrid Lovecraft. An old and powerful magician thinks back to his youth, and of the young lover he once lost. He wonders if he, in all his power, could bring her back."},{"story":"celephais","description":"The most tragic of Lovecraft’s stories on dreams. A man dreams of a majestic city above the sea full of glorious knights, rivers and ships. Desperate to return he drugs himself to sleep over and over."},{"story":"the-pearl-of-love","description":"A short fable on devotion by H. G. Wells. A prince who lost his beloved princess vows to spend the rest of his life building a monument of her so glorious people would come far and wide to see it."},{"story":"the-double-shadow","description":"A gothic tale of two necromancers living on a castle on a cliff. In their ambitions to discover all there is to know about the dark side of magic, they bite off more than they can chew."},{"story":"by-the-waters-of-babylon","description":"This is a prophetic, dystopian vision of the future by the lesser known Stephen Vincent Benét. It’s hard to believe that this story is nearly ninety years old when it feels so modern in it’s concepts and predictions of technology. In this story a young man chooses to leave his tribe and explore ‘The Place of the Gods’, but the Gods are revealed to be not what they seem."},{"story":"a-vintage-from-atlantis","description":"If a story is relayed by a pirate in a bar then you know it’s going to be worth your time. A crew of buccaneers find a mysterious bottle on a beach, temptingly smelling like a wine from a different era, aged to perfection. But when they drink it they start to have strange feelings and strange visions in the sea."},{"story":"the-phoenix-on-the-sword","description":"The very first of the Conan the Barbarian stories, and one of the best. Four rebels commit an assassination attempt on Conan, the current king of the land. But things go terribly wrong for the traitors when they begin to stab each other in the back."},{"story":"the-door-in-the-wall","description":"H. G. Wells’ most famous, and most difficult to interpret short story. In *The Door in the Wall*, a man recounts the story of a magical world he once explored as a child but has never been able to return to again. The world, and the door which leads to it, have been interpreted by readers as many different things, but all of them existentially tragic."}],"title":"Best of Fantasy","subroute":"fantasy","authors":["clarkashtonsmith","hgwells","robertehoward","hplovecraft"],"has_text":true,"quote":{"quote":"“There was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.” * The Phoenix on the Sword","code":"the-phoenix-on-the-sword"},"image_code":"the-phoenix-on-the-sword","image_alt":"Drawing of a man in roman armour holding an axe as a wolf-featured man leans over him.","collection_type":"genre"}