British Future Fiction, 1700-1914

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 19th century provided ideas and reasons 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".