Henry Fitzgerald Heard (1889-1971), commonly called Gerald Heard, was
an historian, science writer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many
articles and authored over 35 books. The Great Fog collects some of his greatest tales.
Cover copy from the 1944 Vanguard edition:
"The Great Fog is literary
adrenalin for the jaded reader of the macabre. Mr. Heard is a master of
capturing the split second when the usual becomes the unusual, when the ordinary
becomes the mysterious. His murderers are not killers but astute men of
ingenuity, his dreamers are men of unknown countries -- and the cats -- well, not
even these inscrutable creatures are safe from his malevolent pen."
Time
magazine:
"Heard is a masterly exponent of the Doylian detective story and
the Wellsian, pseudoscientific fantasy. He makes the flesh creep...the
conscience crawl."
Orville Prescott's review in The New York Times:
"Mr. Heard has combined vast and curious learning with a strange and
wonderful imagination. The result is a volume that should interest enthusiasts
of the macabre and of scientific fantasy. His tales have an overwhelming effect.
He is always original in both manner and matter."
Christopher Morley in
The Book-of-the-Month-Club News:
"Mr. Heard has brilliantly carried into test
tubes the scientific fantasy invented by Poe and developed by H. G. Wells. He
ranges botany, meteorology, psychology, all the 'ologies, for his plots; on the
dark side of science he finds the golden bough of magic fiction. Nothing is so
rare as a collection of really intelligent short stories. It is a form of
writing that has long been corrupted by its easy salability...This (to my own
special taste) belongs with the best."
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