The Country of the Blind:

Although best known for his novels, it was in his early short fiction that H. G. Wells first explored the relationship between the fantastical and everyday. Here horror meets humor, man-eating squids invade the sleepy Devon coast, and strange kinks and portals in space and time lead to other worlds-a marvelous literary universe showcasing the author’s fascination with the wonders and perils of scientific progress. In his introduction, Wells wrote that this collection covers “all the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again.” He went on to say that except for the two sets of linked stories A Story of the Stone Age and A Story of the Days To Come in his earlier collection, Tales of Space & Time, “no short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume.”