Plot summary
The novel is written as a first-person narrative, the narrator being a young attorney from New York named John March. While investigating the disappearance of Evelyn Rand, a young heiress, March is transported across time and space. He finds himself on a strange world which is inhabited by bizarre tentacled creatures who claim to be the descendants of the human race. There he finds Evelyn Rand, abducted as he was, and the two fall in love.
Also present are many historical people who disappeared mysteriously, including the poet François Villon, King Arthur, the lost Dauphin, John Orth of Austria, and the Prophet Elijah. The seven band together to confront their captors, demanding to know why they are there. Two chapters are devoted to an exposition of the history of the human race in evolutionary terms. Despite their technological prowess, the "future men" have lost certain human qualities – including love, loyalty and faith – which they now believe vital to their survival. They will stop at nothing to wrest these "secrets" from their abductees. Horrified by their inhumanity and ruthlessness, the seven vow to stop them at any cost.
As the creatures suffer an attack by mindless monsters which they themselves created, John March and Evelyn Rand are transported back to 20th-century America. March decides to publish a record of their experiences in the hope of changing the direction of human civilization.
Sexual themes are frequently used in science fiction or related genres. Such elements may include depictions of realistic sexual interactions in a science fictional setting, a protagonist with an alternative sexuality, a sexual encounter between a human and a fictional extraterrestrial, or exploration of the varieties of sexual experience that deviate from the conventional.
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
John Shirley is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, Wyatt in Wichita, and one non-fiction book, Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas. Shirley has written novels, short stories, TV scripts and screenplays—including The Crow—and has published over 84 books including 10 short-story collections. As a musician, Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others. His newest novels are Stormland and Axle Bust Creek.
Storm Constantine was a British science fiction and fantasy author, primarily known for her Wraeththu series, which began as one trilogy but has spawned many subsequent works. Beginning in the 1980s, Constantine's short stories appeared in dozens of genre fiction magazines and anthologies. She was the author of over 30 published novels and non-fiction books, plus numerous other publications, including magical grimoires. Her debut novel, The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and subsequently her work was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and the Otherwise Award. In addition to her work as a writer, Constantine headed Immanion Press, an independent publishing company she founded in 2003 with the express purpose of publishing her own back catalog as well as works of other niche fiction and non-fiction writers.
The Lost World is a science fiction novel by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1912, concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survive. It was originally published serially in the Strand Magazine and illustrated by New-Zealand-born artist Harry Rountree during the months of April–November 1912. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.
Works of fiction dealing with mental illness include:
Demon Princes is a series of five science fiction novels by Jack Vance, which cumulatively relate the story of an adventurer, Kirth Gersen, as he exacts his revenge on five notorious criminals, collectively known as the Demon Princes, who carried the people of his village off into slavery during his childhood. Each novel deals with his pursuit of one of the five Princes, which extends from Earth to other planets using spaceships.
Against the Fall of Night is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Originally appearing as a novella in the November 1948 issue of the magazine Startling Stories, it was revised and expanded in 1951 and published in book form in 1953 by Gnome Press. It was later expanded and revised again and published in 1956 as The City and the Stars. A later edition includes another of Clarke's early works and is titled The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night. In 1990, with Clarke's approval, Gregory Benford wrote a sequel titled Beyond the Fall of Night, which continues the story arc of the 1953 novel. It is generally printed with the original novel as a single volume.
George Reginald Turner was an Australian writer and critic, best known for the science fiction novels written in the later part of his career. His first science fiction story and novel appeared in 1978, when he was in his early sixties. By this point, however, he had already achieved success as a mainstream novelist, including a Miles Franklin Award, and as a literary critic.
Subterranean fiction is a subgenre of adventure fiction, science fiction, or fantasy which focuses on fictional underground settings, sometimes at the center of the Earth or otherwise deep below the surface. The genre is based on, and has in turn influenced, the Hollow Earth theory. The earliest works in the genre were Enlightenment-era philosophical or allegorical works, in which the underground setting was often largely incidental. In the late 19th century, however, more pseudoscientific or proto-science-fictional motifs gained prevalence. Common themes have included a depiction of the underground world as more primitive than the surface, either culturally, technologically or biologically, or in some combination thereof. The former cases usually see the setting used as a venue for sword-and-sorcery fiction, while the latter often features cryptids or creatures extinct on the surface, such as dinosaurs or archaic humans. A less frequent theme has the underground world much more technologically advanced than the surface one, typically either as the refugium of a lost civilization, or as a secret base for space aliens.
The lost world is a subgenre of the fantasy or science fiction genres that involves the discovery of an unknown Earth civilization. It began as a subgenre of the late-Victorian adventure romance and remains popular into the 21st century.
Ray Russell was an American editor and writer of short stories, novels, and screenplays. Russell is best known for his horror fiction, although he also wrote mystery and science fiction stories.
Mythago Wood is a fantasy novel by British writer Robert Holdstock, published in the United Kingdom in 1984. Mythago Wood is set in Herefordshire, England, in and around a stand of ancient woodland, known as Ryhope Wood. The story involves the internally estranged members of the Huxley family, particularly Stephen Huxley, and his experiences with the enigmatic forest and its magical inhabitants. The conception began as a short story written for the 1979 Milford Writer's Workshop; a novella of the same name appeared in the September 1981 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
The Last Unicorn is a fantasy novel by American author Peter S. Beagle and published in 1968, by Viking Press in the U.S. and The Bodley Head in the U.K. It follows the tale of a unicorn, who believes she is the last of her kind in the world and undertakes a quest to discover what has happened to the other unicorns. It has sold more than five million copies worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least twenty languages.
Lisa Gracia Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism, Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986). She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various publications. She has been living in the United Kingdom since 1981.
Michael Raymond Donald Ashley is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy.
The Radio Man is a science fiction novel by American writer Ralph Milne Farley. It is the first book in Farley's Radio Man series. The novel was originally serialized from the June 28, 1924 issue of Argosy. It was first published in book form in 1948 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in an edition of 1,000 copies. Modern publishers often release The Radio Man under the title An Earth Man on Venus.
Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first Barsoom tale was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in 1912 and published as a novel as A Princess of Mars in 1917. Ten sequels followed over the next three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding other characters.
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century, it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animations and video games.
Bibliography of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction and nonfiction writer Harry Turtledove:
