Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created (Literary Worlds Series)

A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. __Literary Wonderlands__ is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's __The Fairie Queene__ to Wells's __The Time Machine__ to Murakami's __1Q84__ it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." __Literary Wonderlands__ is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. **Laura Miller** is the book's general editor. Co-founder of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor and writer for 20 years, she is currently a books and culture columnist at __Slate__. A journalist and a critic, her work has appeared in the __New Yorker, Harper's,__ the __Guardian__, and the __New York Times Book Review__, where she wrote the "Last Word" column for two years. She is the author of __The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia__ and editor of the __Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors__. Introduction Anonymous: The epic of Gilgamesh, c.1750 BCE Homer: The odyssey, c.725-675BCE Ovid: Metamorphoses, c.8 Anonymous: Beowulf, c.700-1100 Anonymous: The thousand and one nights, c.700-947 Anonymous: The mabinogion, 12th-14th century Snorri Sturluson: The prose Edda, c.1220 Dante Alighieri: The divine comedy, c.1308-21 Thomas Malory: Le morte d'Arthur, 1485 Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso, c.1516/32 Thomas More: Utopia, 1516 Edmund Spenser: The faerie queene, 1590-1609 Wu Cheng'en: Journey to the west (Xiyouji), c.1592 Tommaso Campanella: The city of the sun, 1602 Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote, 1605/15 William Shakespeare: The tempest, 1611 Cyrano de Bergerac: A voyage to the moon, 1657 Margaret Cavendish: The description of a new world, called the Blazing-World, 1666 Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's travels Ludvig Holberg: The journey of Niels Klim to the world underground, 1741 Charles Kingsley: The water-babies: A fairy tale for a land baby, 1863 Lewis Carroll: Alice's adventures in Wonderland, 1865 Jules Verne: Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, 1870 Samuel Butler: Erewhon, 1872 Richard Wagner: The ring of the Nibelung, 1876 Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure island, 1883 Edwin A. Abbott: Flatland: A romance of many dimensions, 1884 Edward Bellamy: Looking backward: 2000-1887, 1888 Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889 H.G. Wells: The time machine, 1895 L. Frank Baum: The wonderful wizard of Oz, 1900 J.M. Barrie: Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, 1906 Arthur Conan Doyle: The lost world, 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs: At the earth's core, 1914 Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland, 1915 Cecilia May Gibbs: Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: Their adventures wonderful, 1918 Yevgeny Zamyatin: We, 1924 Frank Kafka: The castle, 1926 H.P. Lovecraft: The Cthulhu mythos, 1928-37 Aldous Huxley: Brave new world, 1932 Robert E. Howard: Conan the Barbarian, 1932-36 Vlladimir Bartol: Alamut, 1938 Jorge Luis Borges: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, 1941 Austin Tappan Wright: Islandia, 1942 Antoine de Saint-Exuéry: The little prince, 1943 Tove Jansson: The Moomins and the great flood, 1945 Mervyn Peake: Gormenghast, 1946-59 George Orwell: Nineteen eighty-four, 1949 C.S. Lewis: The chronicles of Narnia, 1950-56 Isaac Asimov: I, Robot, 1950 Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, 1953 J.R.R. Tolkien: The lord of the rings, 1954-55 Juan Rulfo: Pedro Páramo, 1955 Stanisław Lem: Solaris, 1961 Anthony Burgess: A clockwork orange, 1962 Vladimir Nabokov: Pale fire, 1962 Pierre Boulle: Planet of the apes, 1963 Gabriel García Márquez: One hundred years of solitude, 1967 Ursula K. Le Guin: A wizard of Earthsea, 1968 Philip K. Dick: Do androids dream of electric sheep?, 1968 Peter S. Beagle: The last unicorn, 1968 Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-five, 1969 Larry Niven: Ringworld, 1970 Italo Calvino: Invisible cities, 1972 William Goldman: The princess bride, 1973 Samuel R. Delany: Dhalgraen, 1975 Georges Perec: W or the memory of childhood, 1975 Gerd Mjøen Brantenberg: Egalia's daughters: A satire of the sexes, 1977 Angela Carter: The bloody chamber and other stories, 1979 Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, 1979 Douglas Adams: The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, 1979 Stephen King: The dark tower series, 1982-2012 Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series, 1983-2015 William Gibson: Neuromancer, 1984 Margaret Atwood: The handmaid's tale, 1985 Iain M. Banks: The culture series, 1987-2012 Bernardo Atxaga: Obabakoak, 1988 Neil Gaiman et al.: The sandman, 1988-2015 Neal Stephenson: Snow crash, 1992 Lois Lowry: The giver, 1993 Philip Pullman: His dark materials, 1995-2000 George R.R. Martin: A game of thrones, 1996 David Foster Wallace: Infinite jest, 1996 J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone, 1997 China Miéville: The Bas-lag cycle, 2000-04 Jasper Fforde: The Eyre affair, 2001 Cornelia Funke: Inkheart, 2003 Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, 2004 David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas, 2004 Kazuo Ishiguro: Never let me go, 2005 Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o: Wizard of the Crow, 2006 Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, 2007 Suzanne Collins: The hunger games, 2008 Haruki Murakami: IQ84, 2009-10 Wu Ming-Yi: The man with the compound eyes, 2011 Ann Leckie: The imperial Radch trilogy, 2013-15 Nnedi Okorafor: Lagoon, 2014 Salman Rushdie: Two years eight months and twenty-eight nights, 2015. A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans four thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Laura Miller is the book's general editor. Co-founder of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor and writer for 20 years, she is currently a books and culture columnist at Slate . A journalist and a critic, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Guardian , and the New York Times Book Review , where she wrote the "Last Word" column for two years. She is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia and editor of the Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors . A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Laura Miller is the book's general editor. Co-founder of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor and writer for 20 years, she is currently a books and culture columnist at Slate . A journalist and a critic, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Guardian , and the New York Times Book Review , where she wrote the "Last Word" column for two years. She is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia and editor of the Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors . A glorious, full-illustrated collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. With hundreds of pieces of original artwork, illustration and cartography, as well as a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae" for each work, Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Please note that the ebook does not contain images. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Laura... From The Epic Of Gilgamesh, Almost Two Thousand Years Bce, To The Modern Fantasys Of Stephen King's Dark Tower Series And J.k. Rowling's Harry Potter, Authors Have Created Fictional Realms That Have Captivated Audiences. Miller Has Guided A Team Of Writers To Unlock The Mysteries And Meanings Of Nearly 100 Fantastical And Awe-inspiring Lands. The Essays Explore The Contemporary Events And Circumstances That Influenced Each Work, And Examine How Elements Of The Author's Life Were Relevant To The Creation Of The Story. Introduction -- Ancient Myth & Legend -- Science & Romanticism -- Golden Age Of Fantasy -- New World Order -- The Computer Age. General Editor, Laura Miller. Includes Index. "Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction"-- Amazon From the epic of Gilgamesh, almost two thousand years BCE, to the modern fantasies of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, authors have created fictional realms that have captivated audiences. Miller has guided a team of writers to unlock the mysteries and meanings of nearly 100 fantastical lands. The essays explore the contemporary events and circumstances that influenced each work, and examine how elements of the author's life were relevant to the creation of the story.