Imagined Futures
Writing, Science, and Modernity in the To-Day and To-Morrow Book Series, 1923-31
Max Saunders
Reviews and Awards
"In his entertaining and fascinating new book, Imagined Futures, Saunders offers a bracing counter-history, overturning both our received notion of the disillusionment following World War I and challenging our by-now habitual and complacent pessimism. I defy any reader of Saunders book to come away indifferent to the treasure trove he has uncovered. Just his quotations from the thirty or so volumes he discusses in some detail whets this readers appetite. The writing is lively, and the imaginations on display energizing. He devotes chapters to the natural sciences, the human sciences, technology, the everyday, literature, and the genre of futurology. Some of these chapters are more satisfying than others, but every single one will, I am certain, provide inspiration for subsequent scholars. Again and again, Saunders exhibits the impressive imaginations of these scientists." - John McGowan, Modernism/modernity
"Max Saunders has produced what will surely be the definitive study of To-Day and To-Morrow. Perhaps the outstanding feature of Imagined Futures is the breadth of its coverage of the series and its implications. Virtually every To-Day and To-Morrow volume receives probing and erudite commentary in successive chapters devoted to the natural sciences, politics, the human sciences, technology, everyday life, and literature and the arts. In the vast majority of cases, he succeeds in arousing our curiosity. Anyone interested in the confluence of sf and futurology will want to read this book. Saunders has made a deeply insightful and thought-provoking contribution to the field that is becoming known as critical futurities scholarship" - Patrick Parrinder, An Encyclopedia of Futurity, Science-Fiction Studies
"Highly comprehensive and insightful, this landmark study offers a critical re-evaluation of modernism against the background of twentieth-century futurology." - Maxim Shadurski, Modern Language Review
"Saunders is an authority on the literary and cultural currents of the early 20th century, particularly modernism, and takes pains to show how this extraordinary sustained exercise in futurology emerges from that world and merges into our own. That is why this is an important book. OUP have done author and subject proud by producing a handsome volume" - Alan Judd, The Spectator