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Synopsis

Between an ancient Roman's trip to the moon and the fantastic tales of H.G. Wells lies a journey through time and space and an awesome evolution in scientific thinking. From Gilgamesh's search for immortality to Lucian's odyssey on the moon; from Jonathan Swift's hilarious satire on scientists in Gulliver's Travels to Mary Shelley's horrifying description of a scientist who has gone too far in Frankenstein from Edgar Allan Poe's balloon trip in the year 2848 to Jules Verne's prophesies of the impact of scientific inventions on future civilization; from Edward Bellamy's utopian escape from the industrial Revolution to H.G. Wells's magnificent story of Earth threatened by an inescapable menace-here are the chief ancestors of the modern science fiction story. For the first time, these and other key works are gathered together in one anthology, complete with revealing commentary on the authors, their eras, and the role each played in establishing what we today recognize as science fiction. The Road to Science Fiction is a six-volume anthology of science fiction that covers the development of science fiction from its earliest prototypes in the Sumerian Gilgamesh and the Greek epics to approximately 1990. Created originally to provide anthologies for use in classes, these volumes have become mass-market sellers as well, since they are not only a source of outstanding stories but also explain what constitutes science fiction, how it developed and the contribution the authors and the stories have made to the evolution of science fiction.

Table of Contents

• Introduction (The Road to Science Fiction #1) - essay by James E. Gunn
• The First Voyage to the Moon - essay by James E. Gunn
• A True Story (excerpt) - (1965) - shortfiction by Lucian of Samosata
• Strange Creatures and Far Traveling - essay by James E. Gunn
• The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville (excerpt, chap XVIII-XIX) - (1950) - shortfiction by Anonymous
• The Good Place That is No Place - essay by James E. Gunn
• Utopia (book II) (excerpt) - (1516) - shortfiction by Sir Thomas More
• The New Science and the Old Religion - essay by James E. Gunn
• The City of the Sun (excerpt) - (1923) - shortfiction by Tommaso Campanella
• Experience, Experiment, and the Battle for Men's Minds - essay by James E. Gunn
• The New Atlantis (excerpt) - (1627) - shortfiction by Francis Bacon
• A New Look at the Heavens and Another Trip to the Moon - essay by James E. Gunn
• Somnium, or Lunar Astronomy - (1634) - shortstory by Johannes Kepler
• Commuting to the Moon - essay by James E. Gunn
• From A Voyage to the Moon - (1657) - shortfiction by Cyrano de Bergerac
• The Age of Reason and the Voice of Dissent - essay by James E. Gunn
• A Voyage to Laputa (chapters I-VI of Gulliver's Travels) - (1926) - shortfiction by Jonathan Swift
• Imaginary Voyages in the Other Direction - essay by James E. Gunn
• The Journey to the World Underground (excerpt chap. I) - (1941) - shortfiction by Ludvig Holberg
• Science and Literature: When Worlds Collide - essay by James E. Gunn
• Frankenstein (excerpt chap 5 and 10) - (1818) - shortfiction by Mary Shelley
• Science as Symbol - essay by James E. Gunn
• Rappaccini's Daughter - [Rappaccini - 1] - (1844) - novelette by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Anticipations of the Future - essay by James E. Gunn
• Mellonta Tauta - (1849) - shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe
• Expanding the Vision - essay by James E. Gunn
• The Diamond Lens - (1858) - novelette by Fitz-James O'Brien
• The Indispensable Frenchman - essay by James E. Gunn
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (excerpt chap. X-XII) - (1869) - shortfiction by Jules Verne
• Around the Moon (excerpt, chaps. XVII-XVIII) - (1870) - shortfiction by Jules Verne
• Lost Civilizations and Ancient Knowledge - essay by James E. Gunn
• She (excerpt, chaps. XXIV-XXV) - (1886) - shortfiction by H. Rider Haggard
• The New Frontier - essay by James E. Gunn
• Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (excerpt, chaps. 1-5) - (1888) - shortfiction by Edward Bellamy
• New Magazines, New Readers, New Writers - essay by James E. Gunn
• The Damned Thing - (1893) - shortstory by Ambrose Bierce
• A Flying Start - essay by James E. Gunn
• With the Night Mail - (1905) - novelette by Rudyard Kipling
• The Father of Modern Science Fiction - essay by James E. Gunn
• The Star - (1897) - shortstory by H. G. Wells
• A Selected Bibliography of Books About Science Fiction - essay by James E. Gunn
• A Basic Science-Fiction Library - essay by James E. Gunn

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