Technical Slip

An interesting collection of stories by John Wyndham, better known for his SFF novels that involve ordinary people being thrown into extraordinary situations, some of which can be found in these stories. The stories range from the mildly fantastic to truly fantastic, with one murder mystery at the end. Some stories are dated, but others would not look out of place in a current-day anthology.

• Technical Slip: a dying man is offered a chance to live a whole new life. Only, there is a technical slip that must be resolved after the offer is accepted.

• A Present from Brunswick: a mother receives an unusual musical instrument from her son. Upon playing, it has an effect on others that results in the repeat of a fairy tale.

• Chinese Puzzle: a family in Wales receives a foreign egg sent by their son from China. When it hatches, it reveals itself to be an unusual creature that becomes a local curiosity. Only, one person does not believe what it is and sets out to disprove it, setting up a confrontation that would have an unexpected resolution when yet another creature appears.

• Esmeralda: the star of a flea circus would get caught up in a love triangle in a circus.

• How Do I Do?: after a break-up, a woman impulsively visits a fortune-teller. But what she reveals about the woman's future would turn into an unexpected trip and a meeting with a person she would least expect to meet.

• Una: a story of a spotting of unusual animals in a town, which leads two members of an animal rights group to a laboratory. There, they find unusual sights, including one named Una, who takes a liking to one of the animal rights persons, with rather hilarious, and ponderous, results.

• Affair of the Heart: two people have been meeting at a restaurant on the same day for many years. One is a woman who, when young, married a soldier who died during the war. The other was the soldier's companion, who every year asks her to marry him now. But this year, the woman's "No" to the companion would take a different meaning when a person, skilled in the art of reading the lips of others, decodes what her "No" really means.

• Confidence Trick: during an underground train journey, a small group of people suddenly find themselves making a journey to a different underground area. Things look grim until one of the members states his disbelief. Later on, that disbelief would go on to create even more trouble.

• The Wheel: a young boy horrifies a family when he creates a work of the Devil. His grandfather would explain what to him what he did, what may now happen, and how the future might be.

• Look Natural, Please!: a groom wonders why studio photographs of wedding couples always have a fixed smile. Convinced he can do better, he sets up his own photo studio with his own ideas on portrait photography to wide acclaim. But as the years past, others now question his style.

• Perforce to Dream: a new author submits her first novel, only to learn that another has also submitted a similar story. The story came to her in a dream, and apparently it was the same for the other author. The mystery deepens when a play is announced that is also similar. Only when a crisis occurs at the play is the mystery resolved.

• Reservation Deferred: a young girl is dying and is looking forward to going to heaven. Then one day, she is visited by a ghost and asks the ghost how heaven is like. Sadly, the ghost's descriptions of heaven don't match her expectations.

• Heaven Scent: a chemist discovers a scent that turns any woman in a heavenly presence to any males who smell it. But his unnoticed secretary would have other plans for it.

• More Spinned Against: the wife of a man who is fascinated by spiders discovers an unusual spider in his collection, which is revealed to be Arachne, the mythical mortal turned into a spider by Athena. Arachne makes a deal with the wife for freedom for a day. But what she does with the freedom would upturn the wife's world.

• Jizzle: a talented monkey is discovered by a man who works at a circus. He puts the monkey to work, making him wealthy. But the man's wife is displeased with the monkey, and things turn ugly when the monkey uses her talent to turn the wife away. The man then sells the monkey away, but his troubles are not over when the monkey makes use of her talent for revenge on him.

• The Curse of the Burdens: a family and their house live under an apparent curse, which causes each member of the family to die under strange circumstances, until only one man is left. Then, the man disappears, and a search is conducted by his fiancée. But the trail may lead through the fiancée's father and involved others who are investigating the murders and his disappearance.