Michael Ashley

Covers more than 1000 rulers and two millennia of history.

Featuring stories crucial to the evolution of eco-science fiction from Philip K. Dick, Margaret St Clair, J.D. Beresford and more, this timely collection is a trove of essential reading.

This huge volume is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of the fantasy field, offering an exciting new analysis of this highly diverse and hugely popular sphere of literature, from precursors such as Shakespeare and Dante, through Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald and L. Frank Baum to J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and their modern successors, like Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter S. Beagle, Stephen R. Donaldson and Jostein Gaarder. With over 4,000 entries and over 1 million words, it covers every aspect of fantasy - in literature, films, television, opera, art and comics.

"Featuring hard-to-find short stories published between 1873 and 1930, this original anthology spotlights a variety of important sci-fi pioneers, including Ethel Watts Mumford, Edith Nesbit, and Clare Winger Harris. Imaginative scenarios include a feminist society in another dimension, the east/west division of the United States with men and women on opposite sides, a man who converts himself into a cyborg, a drug that confers superhuman qualities, and many other curious situations. Editor Mike Ashley provides an informative introduction to the stories. Highlights include 'When Time Turned' (1901), which centers on a grieving widower who contrives to relive his life backwards; 'The Painter of Dead Women' (1910), the tale of a woman in thrall to a Svengali-like character who promises to preserve her beauty forever; 'The Automaton Ear' (1876), in which an inventor struggles to create a machine to detect sounds from the distant past; 'Ely's Automatic Housemaid' (1899), a lighthearted fable concerning a robot housemaid; and ten other captivating tales" -- Provided by publisher.