{"product_id":"origins-of-futuristic-fiction-9780820337722","title":"Origins of Futuristic Fiction","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor nearly two thousand years, the future was a realm reserved for prophets, poets, astrologers, and practitioners of deliberative rhetoric. Then in 1659 the French writer Jacques Guttin published his romance \u003ci\u003eEpigone\u003c\/i\u003e, which carried the subtitle \"the history of the future century.\" Unlike the stories of space travel that were popular at the time, or the tales of travel to distant earthly lands which had long been a familiar literary genre, Guttin's romance described human societies displaced by time as well as by space and heroes not of his own day but of a future age. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePaul Alkon's \u003ci\u003eOrigins of Futuristic Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e examines the earliest works of prose fiction set in future time, the forgotten writings of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries that are the precursors of such well-known masterpieces of the form as H.G. Wells's \u003ci\u003eThe Time Machine\u003c\/i\u003e, Aldous Huxley's \u003ci\u003eBrave New World\u003c\/i\u003e, and George Orwell's \u003ci\u003e1984\u003c\/i\u003e. The first secular story to break the imaginative barrier against tales of the future, \u003ci\u003eEpigone\u003c\/i\u003e marked the emergence of a form unknown to classical, medieval, or renaissance literature. Guttin's courageous displacement of narrative into future time was followed by writers such as Samuel Madden, Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Cousin de Granville, Mary Shelley, and Emile Souvestre, who wrote books with such titles as \u003ci\u003eMemoirs of the Twentieth Century\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Year 2440\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Last Man\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe World As It Will Be\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMost extraordinary, though, may be Felix Bodin's great metafictional \u003ci\u003eLe roman de l'avenir\u003c\/i\u003e, \"the novel of the future.\" Both a narrative of the future and a poetics of the new genre, this book identified in the previous isolated works set in future time a situation rarely encountered in literary history, in which the possibility for a new form clearly existed without yet being altogether achieved. In the introduction to his uncompleted novel, Bodin presented his vision of the futuristic novel as a literature of realism, morality, and fantasy. His remarkably astute attempt to define the aesthetics of a major transformation in the relation between literature and time still stands as the basis for the poetics of futuristic fiction. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTracing the early literary history of what became a major form of modern fiction, \u003ci\u003eOrigins of Futuristic Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e examines the key works of the earliest writers of the genre not for what they betray of past expectations but for what they reveal about the formal problems that needed to be resolved before tales of the future could achieve their full power in the works of later novelists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Paul K. Alkon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Georgia Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/01\/2010\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 356\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.15lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.79d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780820337722","brand":"University of Georgia Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45486761181321,"sku":"9780820337722","price":36.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_6f5de940-6596-498a-9ffd-7c1a69dbedd2.jpg?v=1775543292","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/origins-of-futuristic-fiction-9780820337722","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}