A spirtual journey to join the living chain that stretches to infinity

The first known dust-jacket to appear on a book in the UK dates from 1819.Sadly, almost none of these jackets have survived. The one institution primarily responsible for this vandalism is the British Library, which removed dust-jackets from every book it accessioned, and destroyed almost all of them. As a result, almost no hardbound book accessioned by the Library after the middle of the nineteenth century was in fact presentable in a visual context: no dust-jacket artwork survive...

Charles Nodier was one of the first populariser of the literary vampire story: Smarra, or the Demons of the Night(1821) is the most notable and horrific of his stories. Nodier also carried forward the French tradition of literary fairy tales, which he enriched with the fantastic extravagance of the romantics. The best of these half fairy and half fantasy tales is Trilby, or the imp of Argyll(1822), which is set in Scotland."Nodier's contes are dense, rich, varied in their settings ...

For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. Look at the Evidence is a collection of reviews from a wide variety of sources - including Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly - about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastik...

Stay gathers together 100,000 words of reviews, plus short fiction by John Clute, and was originally published to coincide with Loncon3 (the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention) at which he was one of the Guests of Honour.Also included is a complete reprint of the text of The Darkening Garden.

For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. As Scores demonstrates, his devotion to the task of understanding the central literatures of our era has not slackened. There are jokes in Scores, and curses, and tirades, and apologies, and riffs; but every word of every review, in the end, is about how we understand the stories we tell about the world.Following on from his two previous books of collected reviews (Strokes a...

Pardon This Intrusion gathers together 47 pieces by John Clute, some written as long ago as 1985, though most are recent. The addresses and essays in Part One, "Fantastika in the World Storm", all written in the twenty-first century, reflect upon the dynamic relationship between fantastika - an umbrella term Clute uses to describe science fiction, horror and fantasy - and the world we live in now.Of these pieces, "Next", a contemporary response to 9/11, ha...

For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. Strokes is a collection of reviews from a wide variety of sources - including Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly - about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastika in our time...

Canary Fever is a collection of reviews about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastika in our times. The title refers to the canary in the coal mine, who whiffs gas and dies to save miners; reviewers of fantastika can find themselves in a similar position, though words can only hurt us.

When Dr Philip Raven, an intellectual working for the League of Nations, dies in 1930 he leaves behind a powerful legacy - an unpublished 'dream book'. Inspired by visions he has experienced for many years, it appears to be a book written far into the future: a history of humanity from the date of his death up to 2105. The Shape of Things to Come provides this 'history of the future', an account that was in some ways remarkably prescient - predicting climatic disaster and sweeping cultural...

The Klavier Station has been silently ambling through the empty sectors of the galaxy for longer than anyone can remember. If it hides a mystery, it is well concealed.Nathaniel Freer, a trader en route with a cargo of dedicated nano-robots, knows that he has been manoeuvred into stopping for repairs on Klavier having survived what was made to look like a botched attempt at piracy. And once there, he gradually begins to understand why. For his cargo is destined for a recently coloni...

Comic, fantastic and grotesque, Walpurgisnacht uses Prague as the setting for a clash between German officialdom immured in the ancient castle above the Moldau, and a Czech revolution seething in the city below. Written in 1917, Walpurgisnacht continues the message of The Green Face, of a decadent society on the brink of collapse and of a Europe past salvation. In it we see Meyrink's exceptional narrative powers at their height.