British Future Fiction, 1700–1914
Editor: I F Clarke
978 1 85196 617 2: 234x156mm: £595.00/$1050.00
In the eight volumes of this edition I F Clarke presents readers with selected primary texts in the genre now generally known as future fiction. He begins with the anonymous Tory utopia, The Reign of George VI, 1900–1925 (1763). Volume by volume he reveals the entrance of new themes: coming wars, better future worlds, the marvels of engineering, the imminent triumph of women, and the end of the world. In linking passages between the selected entries he notes the changes – social, political, technological – that keep pace with the rapid development of the genre; and, in particular he shows how the unprecedented advances and inventions of the nineteenth century provided ideas and arguments for projections of world states, vast flying machines, perfectly planned cities, and universal peace. Decade by decade, mode by mode, the chosen texts will introduce readers to the dominant characteristics of future fiction - a genre that can never stand still. There are the Darwinian expectations that look forward to evolutionary changes; the growing sense of human achievement that was the promise of greater things to come; the contemporary anxieties recurrent throughout the great technological nations that prompted tales of ‘The Next Great European War’.
Contents
Volume 1
The Beginnings
General Introduction; C Oman (ed.), The Reign of George VI, 1900–1925 (1763); Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (1872)
Volume 2
New Worlds
Introduction; W D Hay, Three Hundred Years Hence (1881); W H Hudson, A Crystal Age (1906)
Volume 3
The Marvels of Mechanism
Introduction; W Grove, The Wreck of a World (1889); Louis Tracy, An American Emperor (1897)
Volume 4
Women’s Rights: Yea and Nay
Introduction; Sir Walter Besant, The Revolt of Man (1890); Henry Robert Samuel Dalton, Lesbia Newman (1889)
Volume 5
Woman Triumphant
Introduction; Anon, Star of the Morning (1906); A C Fox-Davies, The Sex Triumphant (1909)
Volume 6
The Next Great War
Introduction; Sir George Tomkyns Chesney, The Battle of Dorking (1871); Abraham Hayward, The Second Armada (1871); William Francis Butler, The Invasion of England (1882); ‘Posteritas’, The Siege of London (1884); James Eastwick, The New Centurion; a Tale of Automatic Warfare (1895); Captain S Eardley-Wilmot, The Next Naval War (1894)
Volume 7
Disasters-to-Come
Introduction; Robert Wililiam Cole, The Death Trap (1907); Lloyd Williams, The Great Raid (1909); Anon., Under the Red Ensign (1912)
Volume 8
The End of the World
Introduction; William Delisle Hay, The Doom of the Great City (1880); John Davidson, The Salvation of Nature (1891); Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World (1907)
Reviews
‘It’s hard to imagine any advanced student or scholar working in this area who wouldn’t learn many new things by perusing British Future Fiction. I did…. Every university library ought to acquire [it].’
– Paul Alkon, Science Fiction Studies
‘I F Clarke, who may be said not only to have pioneered, but almost to have invented, the academic study of future fiction, has now [made[ accessible a representative sample of the lesser-known purveyors of imaginative prophecy and in doing so he has placed all Victorianists in his debt.’
– Robert Dingley, Australasian Victorian Studies Journal