Histories of the future : studies in fact, fantasy and science fiction

This collection of interdisciplinary essays examines some of the ways in which writers, artists, film makers, strategists and political thinkers have imagined the future over the last two centuries.

Although a number of contributions discuss mainstream science fiction, the collection's emphasis is not on any single genre, but rather on the ways in which different histories - technological, cultural, military, ideological - generate and inform different modes of speculation about things to come.

These histories also disclose that our patterns of expectation are much influenced by our relationship to the past