The Plattner Story, and Others by H. G. Wells AUDIOBOOK

First published in 1897, "The Plattner Story, and Others" brings together a suite of tales by H. G. Wells, whose reputation as a pioneer of speculative fiction was already firmly established by the time of this collection. In these stories, Wells applies his keen scientific imagination and subtle irony to the mysteries and ambiguities of existence, offering readers a panorama of the uncanny and the thought-provoking.

At the heart of the volume is "The Plattner Story," a remarkable meditation on evidence, skepticism, and the limits of ordinary perception. Gottfried Plattner, an outwardly unremarkable Modern Languages Master in a small English school, finds his life irreversibly altered after a bizarre classroom accident involving a mysterious green powder. The events that follow—witnessed by schoolboys and documented in photographic evidence—leave Plattner physically inverted, his body’s left and right exchanged, suggesting an unimaginable passage through the fourth dimension. Wells relays Plattner’s predicament as an exercise in narrative balance, pitting empirical testimony against the boundaries of rational belief.

Throughout this collection, Wells’s prose is lucid, quietly humorous, and characteristically incisive. He crafts an atmosphere charged with scientific curiosity and human fallibility, inviting readers to consider not only the possibilities inherent in a universe governed by unseen forces, but also the psychological aftermath when ordinary individuals are thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Themes of lost certainties, the relativity of truth, and the skepticism of the scientific observer recur in these pages, threaded with Wells’s gentle satire and meticulous attention to social detail.

Ideal for those who appreciate the speculative and the strange, this audiobook reveals Wells at his most inventive, examining the thresholds between commonplace reality and the wild uncertainties that lie just beyond its margins.

Audiobook time & format : 8h4m13s, OPUS, 377 Mo
Audiobook free extract time & format : 5m (see below to listen), WAV
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