SOURCE: "Short Fiction: The Forms," and "Short Fiction: The Themes," in John Collier, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 72-89, 90-105.

Richardson is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, she provides a stylistic and thematic overview of Collier's short fiction.

A John Collier story is recognizable; it is unique. Most of his approximately fifty stories are reprinted continually, and they seem contemporary, even those first published some thirty years ago. Collier is not a realist, but, unlike Lord Dunsany, with whom he has been compared, he does not exploit the supernatural for its own sake, nor, like Saki, is he writing about horror simply to horrify. Instead, he generally is intent on a Bergsonian illumination of the flux, violence, horror, and possibility that underlie everyday life. This sense of a changing and exciting universe, as has been seen, underlies Paradise Lost; fear of it sends the hero of...