Erasmus Darwin (Grandfather of Charles Darwin)
Publisher’s blurb: "18th Century Europe: It is an age when superstition is beginning to give way to the force of human reason, and no man so fully embodies the spirit of the times as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Thinker, healer, and explorer of the bizarre and the seemingly supernatural, no mystery can stand for long against Darwin's enlightened analysis. And there are far more mysteries than history knows. . . . For Erasmus Darwin's world is filled with oddities that most cannot believe: from unknown beings lurking just outside the boundaries of civilization, to anomalies that even the greatest natural philosophers will be hard-pressed to explain, to mysterious deaths that give rise to fears of malevolent sorcery."
- The Amazing Dr. Darwin, (Baen June 2002); a collection of linked stories:
- Introduction, (in) *; Read online
- "The Devil of Malkirk," (na) F&SF June 1982; Read online
- "The Heart of Ahura Mazda," (nv) AHMM Nov. 1988
- "The Phantom of Dunwell Cove," (nv) Asimov’s Aug. 1995
- "The Lambeth Immortal," (nv) AHMM June 1979
- "The Solborne Vampire," (nv) AHMM Jan. 1998
- "The Treasure of Odirex," (na) Fantastic July 1978
- Appendix- Erasmus Magister: Fact and Fiction, (ar) Erasmus Magister, Ace 1982
The Amazing Dr. Darwin was preceded by an earlier version: Erasmus Magister, (Ace June 1982); also, Sheffield later wrote an additional Erasmus Darwin story:
- "The Demon of E Staircase," (ss) AHMM Jan. 2003
Read more about this topic: Charles Sheffield, Fiction, Series
Famous quotes containing the words charles, erasmus and/or darwin:
“When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora’s box. “What! all!” said the Prince. “Yes, all.” “No,” said the Prince; “curiosity must have been without.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“It was at a particular moment in the history of my own rages that I saw the Western world conditioned by the images of Marx, Darwin and Freud; and Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western world. The simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)