In the eight volumes of this edition I F Clarke presents readers with selected primary texts in the genre now generally known as future fiction. He begins with the anonymous Tory utopia, The Reign of George VI, 1900-1925 (1763). Volume by volume he reveals the entrance of new themes: coming wars, better future worlds, the marvels of engineering, the imminent triumph of women, and the end of the world. In linking passages between the selected entries he notes the changes - social, political, technological - that keep pace with the rapid development of the genre; and, in particular he shows how the unprecedented advances and inventions of the nineteenth century provided ideas and arguments for projections of world states, vast flying machines, perfectly planned cities, and universal peace. Decade by decade, mode by mode, the chosen texts introduce readers to the dominant characteristics of future fiction - a genre that can never stand still.
There are the Darwinian expectations that look forward to evolutionary changes; the growing sense of human achievement that was the promise of greater things to come; the contemporary anxieties recurrent throughout the great technological nations that prompted tales of 'The Next Great European War'.
Industry Reviews
'Clarke's general introduction, introductions to each story, notes, and epilogue at the end of the last volume provide an excellent survey of future fiction from its beginnings through post-Hiroshima developments. He also includes a useful bibliography of secondary material. Those new to the topic will find ample and accurate orientation to it in British Future Fiction. It's hard to imagine any advanced student or scholar working in this area who wouldn't also learn many new things by perusing British Future Fiction. I did... British Future Fiction makes widely available a group of too often neglected documents that deserve attention from those now so diligently applying to other materials new methods of cultural and intellectual history. Here is a fresh body of evidence. Those more concerned with the aesthetics than with the sociology of future fiction may also study to good effect the stories in Clarke's anthology. Every university library ought to acquire British Future Fiction 1700-1914. Everyone seriously concerned with the history of sf and utopian literature ought to consult it and if possible buy a set. British Future Fiction 1700-1914 is a major resource for scholars. For I F Clarke it is yet another triumph.' - Paul Alkon, Science Fiction Studies 'Now, in what is probably the peak of his scholarly career, Clarke has assembled a generous selection of these texts - 22 in all - in the eight-volume British Future Fiction: 1700-1914, which comes complete with facsimile reproductions of the novels (usually but not always first editions), scholarly introductions and notes, bibliographical details, and even a index of the scholarly apparatus. Although its spectacular price (USD 795 in the U.S.) is likely to limit its sales to libraries and genuinely maniacal collectors, the collection is one of the most important historical documents ever assembled to provide access to the works which, at least by virtue of hindsight, became the prototypes of modern SF.' - Gary K Wolfe, LOCUS: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field 'Clarke's eight-volume set of classic future-fiction novels solidifies his reputation as one of the major scholars of what he calls "future fiction." It is his special province in the larger kingdom of what the rest of the world calls "science fiction." Last year the Science Fiction Research Association conferred on him its Pilgrim Award for scholarship, and this massive collection, in progress then and for many years before, confirms SFRA's belated recognition... My long-held conviction is that if you wish to know where you are going, it is a good idea to know where you have been. Clarke's collection of hard-to-find stories provides that opportunity. The set is well published in a sturdy green cover with a red title band and large, easy-to-read reproductions, though with some print variations. Scholars interested in recommending to their libraries the purchase of Clarke's anthology can refer their librarians to the Pickering & Chatto website , where they also will find listed Claeys's eight-volume Modern British Utopias: 1700-1850.' - James Gunn, Utopian Studies 'I F Clarke, who may be said not only to have pioneered, but almost to have invented, the academic study of future fiction, has now selected and introduced an eight-volume assembly of reprinted texts ranging chronologically from 1763 (the anonymous and pedestrian Reign of George VI) to the eve of the First World War. Resisting the easy temptation to reproduce readily available works like Erewhon and The War of the Worlds, his purpose has been to make accessible a representative sample of the lesser-known purveyors of imaginative prophecy and in doing so he has placed all Victorianists in his debt.' - Robert Dingley, Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 'British Future Fiction 1700-1914 once again places scholars working in the field under a debt to Professor Clarke, furnishing them with a veritable quarry of easily accessible construction materials. With few exceptions, all these texts are intrinsically interesting, and all, without exception, have a contribution to make in helping us to understand the development of the tale of the future. The General Introduction offers an invaluable and comprehensive account of the apprehensions and the expectations which underlie the sudden efflorescence of future fiction; while the shorter introduction to each of the twenty-two individual tales contextualizes them with the depth of learning and breadth of reading one has come to expect from the author of The Pattern of Expectation and Voices Prophesying War.' - Alan Sandison, Science Fiction Research Association Review 'The reader gets a wonderful sense of book making, or design; I like especially seeing the double columns of small print from the first printing of The Battle of Dorking in the May 1871 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. But publishing data such as this from the past needs, also, to be organized and buttressed with indices, forewords, other bibliographies. Each volume here has a general introduction; each text its own introduction; all eight volumes are indexed. Further, the introductions are accumulative so that by reading all the massive commentary by Clarke in order one is able to piece together his general interpretation of how and why the genre of future fictions evolved and why a certain mode of that genre came to its end with the Great War of 1914, along with so much else in our culture. Clarke refers to many additional texts that he does not reprint. Some of his choices for inclusion are by well-known figures such as Besant or Bulwer-Lytton, but most of the 22 narratives are ones that have been thoroughly buried by time and so the digging of Clarke is profoundly valuable to us for that reason... But finally it all comes down to publishing, and so I reserve the last praise here for Pickering and Chatto for bringing out such full and useful material from underground.' - Donald M Hassler, Extrapolation '... many of these texts are extremely rare and Clarke's scholarship offers us a remarkable viewpoint of the way the future has become more and more important as a fictional territory.' - Andy Sawyer, Foundation 'British Future Fiction, a massive, eight-volume collection, now makes more easily available some two dozen intriguing, historically relevant, and entertaining examples of writing about imagined events and social innovations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... Clarke's extraordinary effort deserves the praise of futurists everywhere. By selecting, editing, annotating, and bringing back into print these significant writings, Clarke has taken another step to help make futures fiction available as a useful resource for contemporary futures studies.' - Lane Jennings, The Futurist
