The Tachypomp and Other Stories

By Edward Page Mitchell

How fast can a machine travel when mathematics refuses to recognise a limit? A student's pursuit of infinite speed opens a collection in which scientific ambition repeatedly collides with consequences that no equation can comfortably contain. Elaborate apparatus, technical jargon and pseudo-scientific reasoning lend each impossible premise its own persuasive logic, while satire and grotesque humour expose the confidence of experimenters determined to master matter, mind and time. Across laboratories, universities, museums and centres of political power, invention becomes a test of identity, authority and human feeling. Scientists seek to measure the soul, transmit matter electrically and manufacture artificial intelligence, treating the extraordinary as a practical problem awaiting the correct mechanism. Yet rational systems cannot easily account for love, prejudice, restrictive law or the desire for social reform. The collection's speculative fiction moves between comic ingenuity and gothic unease, asking what remains of the human when bodies, perceptions and histories become subjects for mechanical or physiological transformation. Time itself proves no safer from interference. From Washington in 1937 to a house governed by an extraordinary clock, experiments in reversal and suspended animation bring private choices into contact with political power and historical causation. These science fiction short stories unite audacious concepts with precise explanatory play, making each invention feel simultaneously absurd, methodical and dangerously plausible. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions. It has been restored for today's and future generations. This edition is not just a reprint - it's a collector's item and a cultural treasure.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9378411975
• ISBN13: 9789378411977
• Release Date: December 2026
• Publisher: Alpha Edition
• Length: 84 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"