Review of “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade” (1845)
Edgar Allan Poe (writer).
Read in 2022.
In an addendum to One Thousand and One Nights (1704), Scheherazade paraphrases a plotless catalogue of the wonders of the real world, with footnotes. Wonders include Babbage’s proto-computer and astronomical distances relative to the speed of light.
The concept is strong, the execution weak like “Diddling” (1843).
References here: “Some Words with a Mummy” (1845).