This one volume anthology explores the last two hundred years of Science Fiction and Fantasyfeaturing women and men authors of various ethnic backgrounds, and a range of both traditional canonical literature and popular culture. Designed to heighten interest in a fun and exciting topic, this book will lead readers to meaningful intellectual, social, and historic investigations.Contributing authors include Mary W. Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bram Stoker, Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, Jack London, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut.For fans of science fiction, fantasy, and the stories presented here, who appreciate that they represent the best of humanity, and include potential warnings for where humanity is headed.

GARYN G. ROBERTS, Ph.D., is the chair of the Communications/English Discipline of Northwestern Michigan College (Traverse City, Michigan). He was born and raised in Wisconsin, home of Stanley G. Weinbaum and the Milwaukee Fictioneers, August Derleth and Arkham House, Robert Bloch, Fredric Brown, Clifford Simak, Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr.), and Peter Straub, and north of the land of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy and Ray Bradbury's Greentown, Illinois.

Roberts received his B.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater in 1981, his M.A. in Popular Culture Studies and Ph.D. in American Culture Studies (with emphases in English, History, and Sociology) from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in 1983 and 1986 respectively. From 1986 to 1987, he taught in the English Department at Mankato State University, Minnesota; from 1987 to 1994, he taught in the American Thought and Language Department at Michigan State University; and in 1994, he joined the faculty at Northwestern Michigan College.

Beyond his family and friends (colleagues and students included), Dr. Roberts's loves and passions include Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, the writings and creative works of Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury, the detailed and invaluable histories and scholarship of Sam Moskowitz, dime novels and related nineteenth-century fiction, the "pulps," classic newspaper comic strips, old movies, old radio, Big Little Books, comic books, paperback books, old TV, and other related forms of popular fiction and popular media.

Roberts is the author and editor of several books and a range of book chapters, articles, and literary dictionary entries. Subject matter of these includes, in part, dime novels, pulp magazines, 1950s Science Fiction invasion movies, pulp magazine editors Hugo Gernsback and Joseph T. Shaw, Jack London, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Dean Kootz. In 1994, Roberts received an Edgar (Allan Poe) Award nomination in the "Best Critical/Biographical" category from the Mystery Writers of America for DICK TRACY AND AMERICAN CULTURE: MORALITY AND MYTHOLOGY, TEXT AND CONTEXT (McFarland, 1993). Currently, he is working on book-length tributes to Chester Gould, Robert Bloch, and Ray Bradbury.

PREFACE Parameters, or,Amazing StoriesversusWeird Tales, Astounding StoriesversusUnknown WorldsThe stories showcased and analyzed here are "Fantasy" and/or "Science Fiction" written and published in English, or Fantasy and/or Science Fiction translated into and published in English. This book's contents, discussions, and organization are designed to explore the distinctions and similarities between two broadly yet specifically defined genres of fiction--Fantasy and Science Fiction. "Genres," for the purpose of this book, are generally and simply defined as artistic and story categories. Definitions and differences between stories and story genres are important starting points for analysis and appreciation; however, from a larger cultural, anthropological, and sociological perspective, similarities between stories and story forms may be more telling and significant. For the purpose of this book, "society" and "culture" are essentially interchangeable terms, referencing a group of interrelated people tied together by common mythology. A mythology is an all-encompassing narrative/story or a complex of interrelated component stories that serves as cultural definition, religion, reality, and explanation and justification of action. Crossovers between Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as crossovers between Fantasy, Science Fiction, and other genres, such as Mysteries, Detective Fiction, Westerns, Adventure stories, and more, are explored.Herein, the reader will find a range of ethnicities, mythologies, religions, and perspectives represented. Women writers, women's writing, and female story characters are found throughout this book, since women writers were and are integral parts of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) history. (An investigation of authors' pseudonyms from the first half of the twentieth century, for example, shows that women were much more a part of F&SF history than previously thought by students of these genres.) It is important to remember that modern F&SF was first articulated, if not begun, by a young woman named Mary Shelley and her archetypal novel,Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus(1818, rev. 1831).With the exception of J. R. R. Tolkien's "Chapter Five: Riddles in the Dark" (1937), all stories reprinted here are complete; even the famed Tolkien sequence, which features Bilbo Baggins and Gollum, stands by itself, outside the larger context of Tolkien's novel, as a complete tale.Many of the authors included in this book have created series F&SF story characters of various sorts and degrees of popular and critical success. At first, the temptation was to feature the best series characters and their best stories, regardless of other considerations, such as story themes. But, if this was to be done, then as good and important as Fritz Leiber's Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser story, "The Bazaar of the Bizarre" (Fantastic,August 1963), are, what may be an even more representative landmark story of Leiber's life achievements and contributions to the genre--"Smoke Ghost" (Unknown Worlds,October 1941)--would have to be excluded. Further, much of the popular success of Leiber's swashbuckling duo is an extension of that enjoyed by Robert E. Howard's more archetypal stories of Conan the Barbarian, such as "The Tower of the Elephant" (Weird Tales,March 1933). With this in mind, the temptation then became to ignore all series characters categorically. This plan would not have been prudent either. "The Tower of the Elephant" is one of Howard's most important contributions to Heroic Fantasy, and to ignore it because it is a Conan story would be as short-sighted as including all series characters and stories without abandon.Other difficult choices needed to be made. The list of great Ray Bradbury stories is extensive, but only one could be chosen. In this case, after much thought, on