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octavia_cade 's review for:
The Door In The Wall and Other Stories
by Alvin Langdon Coburn, H.G. Wells
A short collection of eight stories by H.G. Wells. They're all fairly likeable, although the focus on dreams and apocalypse can become a little repetitive. There were two that really stood out for me, though. The first was the title story, "The Door in the Wall", which was quiet and restrained and not particularly original, but so wistful and sadly regretful in its tone that it became really rather appealing. The one unreservedly great story here, though, was "The Country of the Blind" (the early version, with the non-stupid ending - why did you mess with this piece of perfection, Mr. Wells? Why?). It works on those typical sci-fi tropes of conformity and individualism and oppression, the tension between utopian and dystopian societies, and it's so subtle and so ambiguous in its original form that it rewards both a number of readings, and a number of different readings. It's genuinely outstanding.