THE FANTASTIC MIRROR: Science Fiction Across the Ages

The fantasy of the possible"" in the history of man's bizarre or occult or prophetic imagination is traced, prodigiously excerpted (in italic script), and illustrated with photo-reprints as Mr. Appel star-treks through the archives of science fiction. He says it's a ""fiction of things-to-come based on things-on-hand,"" that actual discoveries generated stories expanding on the newest precepts, that rhetorical inventions of what-will-be coincide With real changes in what-is. But he (con)fuses the satire of Twain, Swift, and Rabelais with the proto-scientific writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, and attributes the gift or even intent of prophecy to such as Lucian (whose True History is essentially a fabulous extension of his own mythological heritage); rather conspicuously missing are Huxley and Orwell--surely masters of the genre. Nonetheless the very notion of a thematic look at literature in an unacademic way is an entertaining one, so if this Mirror's refractions are not always consistent they are still well worth reflecting on: it's a good-looking book graced by appropriately flamboyant prose, and the tidbits of fantasmagoria promise to motivate many to seek more.