Contents (view Concise Listing)

• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar • (1845) • short story by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Birth Mark • (2008) • short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (variant of The Birth-Mark 1843)
• The Bell Tower • (2008) • short fiction by Herman Melville (variant of The Bell-Tower 1855)
• The Damned Thing • (1893) • short fiction by Ambrose Bierce [as by Ambrose G. Bierce]
• In the Year 2889 • (1949) • short story by Jules Verne and Michel Verne (trans. of La journée d'un journaliste américain en 2890 1890) [as by Jules Verne]
• The Empire of the Ants • (1905) • short story by H. G. Wells
• Finis • (1940) • short story by Frank Lillie Pollock [as by Frank Lillie Pollack]
• The Machine Stops • (1909) • novelette by E. M. Forster
• As Easy As A. B. C. • [Aerial Board of Control • 2] • (1912) • novelette by Rudyard Kipling
• The Red One • [The Red One • 1] • (1918) • novelette by Jack London
• Dagon • (1919) • short story by H. P. Lovecraft
• A Tale of Negative Gravity • (1884) • novelette by Frank R. Stockton
• To Whom This May Come • (1889) • short story by Edward Bellamy
• In the Year Ten Thousand • (1892) • short story by Will N. Harben [as by William Harben]
• The Ray of Displacement • (1903) • short story by Harriet Prescott Spofford [as by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford]
• Friend Island • (1918) • short story by Francis Stevens
• Fessenden's Worlds • (1937) • short story by Edmond Hamilton
• The Blue Giraffe • (1939) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• They • (1941) • short story by Robert A. Heinlein
• The First Science Fictions: Afterword • essay by Paul Cook