Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov 2 hr 11 min read

In a domed polar metropolis, a strange psychic plague of 'contradiction' takes hold, driving citizens to do the opposite of what they intend, and a perfect city descends into madness.

Valery Bryusov's collection (this 1918 English edition) gathers the fantastic tales of a great Russian Symbolist. Eerie, visionary, superbly told. Read it for a landmark of Russian speculative fiction, the chilling title story of a self-destroying utopia, and other strange, sophisticated tales of the fantastic.

In its time

Published in 1918, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

2 hr 11 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).