Two Very Different Short Stories To Review

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I have been listening to quite a lot of audio stories on Libravox on the internet, a free service. Two very different science fiction yarns are among the recent gems I discovered. The Thames Valley Catastrophe by Grant Allen from 1897, deals with a volcano destroying a city - London. (which in reality has no volcanoes). It is told quite seriously, in the style of an early H G Wells story with the narrator seeing the desperate evacuation efforts and the destruction of the city. It reminded me of the film Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones fighting lava flows in Los Angeles. . The Venus Trap by Evelyn Smith from the 1950's couldn't be more different. It tells of an unfortunate woman discovering that her husband is having a love affair. That is not unusual in itself, but this adulterer has chosen an unlikely concubine, a talking tree on Venus. Much of the story is a dialogue between the two females, struggling to suppress their jealousy of one another. It is very funny. Both stories are well worth hunting down, Arthur Chappell