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Vintage Visions is a seminal collection of scholarly essays on early works of science fiction and its antecedents. From Cyrano de Bergerac in 1657 to Olaf Stapledon in 1937, this anthology focuses on an unusually broad range of authors and works in the genre as it emerged across the globe, including the United States, Russia, Europe, and Latin America. The book includes material that will be of interest to both scholars and fans, including an extensive bibliography of criticism on early science fiction--the first of its kind--and a chronological listing of 150 key early works. Before Dr. Strangelove, future-war fiction was hugely popular in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Before Terminator, a French author depicted Thomas Edison as the creator of the perfect female android. These works and others are featured in this critical anthology.

Contributors include Paul K. Alkon, Andrea Bell, Josh Bernatchez, I. F. Clarke, William J. Fanning Jr., William B. Fischer, Allison de Fren, Susan Gubar, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, Kamila Kinyon, Stanislaw Lem, Patrick A. McCarthy, Sylvie Romanowski, Nicholas Ruddick, and Gary Westfahl.

Contents:

• Preface
• Sylvie Romanowski, Cyrano de Bergerac's Epistemological Bodies: "Pregnant with a Thousand Definitions" (1998, with an afterword by Ishbel Addyman)
• Paul K. Alkon, Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1985)
• William B. Fischer, German Theories of Science Fiction: Jean Paul, Kurd Lasswitz, and After (1976)
• Josh Bernatchez, Monstrosity, Suffering, Subjectivity, and Sympathetic Community in Frankenstein and "The Structure of Torture" (2009)
• Arthur B. Evans, Science Fiction vs. Scientific Fiction in France: From Jules Verne to J.-H. Rosny Aîné (1988)
• I.F. Clarke, Future-War Fiction: The First Main Phase, 1871-1900 (1997, with an afterword by Margaret Clarke)
• Allison de Fren, The Anatomical Gaze in Tomorrow's Eve (2009)
• Andrea Bell, Desde Júpiter: Chile's Earliest Science-Fiction Novel (1995)
• Rachel Haywood Ferreira, The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots (2007)
• Nicholas Ruddick, "Tell Us All About Rosebery": Topicality and Temporality in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (2001)
• Kamila Kinyon, The Phenomenology of Robots: Confrontations with Death in Karel Capek's R.U.R. (1999)
• Patrick A. McCarthy, Zamyatin and the Nightmare of Technology (1984)
• Gary Westfahl, "The Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe Type of Story": Hugo Gernsback's History of Science Fiction (1992)
• William J. Fanning, Jr., The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s (2010)
• Susan Gubar, C.L. Moore and the Conventions of Women's Science Fiction (1980, with an afterword by Veronica Hollinger)
• Stanislaw Lem, On Stapledon's Star Maker (1987, with an afterword by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.)
• 150 Key Works of Early Science Fiction
• Bibliography of Criticism on Early Science Fiction
• Contributors