Fantastic Imaginings: A Journey Through 3500 Years of Imaginative Writing, Comprising Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction A Journey Through 3500 Years of Imaginative Writing, Comprising Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction

Collected here are the stories, poems, and religious writings that preceded and helped form the science fiction and fantasy genres. The collection explores the key imaginative roots and their later literary permutations. The author list alone reads like a literary who's who and includes many writers not primarily known for their forays into the fantastic. Organized by topic rather than simple chronology, this volume allows the listener to trace the history of robots, aliens, and apocalypses up to some of their most recent manifestations.Topic chapters and represented authors include Monsters and Human Transformation (Dickens, Hawthorne, Rossetti), Strange Societies and Utopias (Swift, Burroughs), and Alternate Histories and Parallel Worlds (Bierce, Lovecraft, McCaffrey). This definitive collection of science fiction and fantasy sources illustrates how earlier generations imagined the future.