The Origins of Science Fiction

Description

A selection of science-fiction tales from the close of the 'Romantic' period to the end of the First World War. It gathers together classic short stories, from Edgar Allan Poe's playful hoaxes to Gertrude Barrows Bennett's feminist fantasy.

• A delightful anthology of early science fiction from the close of the Romantic period to the early twentieth century, showing the extraordinary imaginative diversity of the genre
• Uses copy-text of the first published version in Britain or America of the stories in book form, or of first publication in a magazine or journal
• Includes historically informed notes and biographies of the authors, a chronology of Victorian fairy tales, and an appendix in which some of the included authors discuss the nature of fairy tale and its importance

About the Author(s)

Michael Newton

MICHAEL NEWTON is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002) and Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012). On the subject of cinema, he has written Show People: A History of the Film Star (2019) and books on Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) for the BFI Film Classics series. He has edited Edmund Gosse's Father and Son and Victorian Fairy Tales for Oxford World's Classics, and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories for Penguin Classics, and co-edited the anthology, Literature and Science, 1660-1834: Science as Polite Culture (Pickering & Chatto). He teaches literature and film at Leiden University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Note on the Texts
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of the Origins of Science Fiction
The Mortal Immortal, Mary Shelley
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, Edgar Allan Poe
Rappaccini's Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, Edgar Allan Poe
The Diamond Lens, Fitz-James O'Brien
The Lifted Veil, George Eliot
Pausodyne: A Great Chemical Discovery, Grant Allen
The Water-Devil. A Marine Tale, Frank R. Stockton
The Crystal Egg, H. G. Wells
'Wireless', Rudyard Kipling
The Hall Bedroom, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
The Country of the Blind, H. G. Wells
The Machine Stops, E. M. Forster
The Terror of Blue John Gap, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Red One, Jack London
Friend Island, Gertrude Barrows Bennett
The Comet, W. E. B. Dubois
Explanatory Notes

Reviews

new (to me) names who thrilled me. A truly great collection ...my highest recommendation! - Leah Galbraith, Fiction Fan Blog