Flame Tree Fiction

As part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations, various cinemas screened a recording of the NT's live production of Frankenstein last month, based on Mary Shelley's gothic horror story. As I had not been lucky enough to get hold of one of the theatre tickets back in 2011 – they were like gold dust – I jumped at the chance to go see it at the cinema. The whole idea of opening up the theatre this way is fantastic, and although I do miss the atmosphere of a live performance, I undoubtedly had an enviable 'front-row' view thanks to the position of the cameras.

One of Lovecraft's classic creepy stories, written in the same year as the untimely, self-inflicted death of Robert E. Howard, this horrific tale is a follow-up to an early Robert Bloch story, The Shambler from the Stars, picking up the Cthulhu strands created by Lovecraft in his Call of the Cthulhu, eight years earlier. Bloch, whose Psycho inspired Hitchock’s famous film of 1960, later ended the cycle in 1950 with a third story, The Shadow from the Steeple.

Robert E. Howard's first story featuring Solomon Kane, his swashbuckling puritan warrior, was published in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales (1928 being a great year for pulp fiction with the first Buck Rogers story, and H.P. Lovecraft's iconic Call of the Cthulhu). Not quite as illustrious as his more celebrated barbarian stablemate, Conan of Cimmeria, Mr Kane's story is still a power-packed read and a worthy addition to our collection of creepy stories.

The Buck Rogers pulp sf fiction stories, along with the competing Flash Gordon tales, were a core inspiration for George Lucas' Star Wars. Rogers' first appearance, in Armageddon - 2419 hit the same publication year, 1928, as Lovecraft's Call of the Cthulhu and Robert E. Howard's first Solomon Kane romp, Red Shadows. The late twenties were an exciting time for the pulps: the possibilities of new technology combined with the age-old fear of the unknown fuelled the imagination of writers across the US and Europe and it was from this wellspring that Buck Rogers flourished.

H.P. Lovecraft, the master of the weird and macabre, the ultimate writer of creepy stories, set a fantastical world in motion with the publication of this short story in the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales. He stood on the shoulders of horror giants Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen; and a generation of pulp writers, including the muscular genius of Robert E. Howard (with his ultimate creation, Conan of Cimmeria) claim Lovecraft as their inspiration.

Few stories have captured the imagination as thoroughly as Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's one of the best sci fi books ever written and even its title sends shivers down your spine, and makes the mind drift to adventure.

Greek mythology is full of gods, monsters and supernatural events – much like any other fantasy fiction. Popular tale 'Theseus and the Minotaur' is getting a retelling in BBC's latest fantasy adventure, based in the city of Atlantis. This brilliant show is bringing to life all sorts of Greek myths with a dash of humour, interesting character dynamics and plenty of action.

It seems incredible that some of Philip K. Dick's fiction is in the public domain. A superlative writer of science fiction and fantasy books Dick gave us so many powerful novels and films (Blade Runner, The Adjustment Bureau, Total Recall) but his first stories are available because their copyright was not renewed.

Oscar Wilde’s sole novel The Picture of Dorian Gray remains to this day a classic example of gothic horror. While initially rejected by a morally-rigid Victorian England, the novel has lived on and been elevated so that it, as well as Oscar Wilde himself, have become mainstays of the English canon. We celebrate Wilde and his work, and mourn the injustices he suffered in his life. While many called this novel obscene, the opposite is true. As Wilde put it, while the work presented moral issues it never demonstrated a morality itself. Instead, Wilde's goal was to depict and not to judge.

While Bram Stoker was not the first to write a novel about vampires, an idea which can be traced all the way back to Mesopotamia, he definitely established the modern concept of vampires with his novel Dracula.