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    The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy And Summaries of Great Books to Read
    The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy And Summaries of Great Books to Read
    The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy And Summaries of Great Books to Read
    Ebook343 pages3 hours

    The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy And Summaries of Great Books to Read

    By Martin Ettington

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    Whether you are new to Science Fiction or have been reading this genre for years, I hope you will have as much fun reading this book as I had writing it.

    In this history I’ve tried to include the best known authors and their most famous and interesting works. Many of these stories are groundbreaking. Some launched new sub genres, and some talked about technology which is now real or being developed. I have read almost all of the novels mentioned here.

    I’ve also summarized various great novels throughout this book. These are stories you will enjoy reading. They might be examples of the changing genres, or just really good yarns. There are a lot of stories I love in the sci fi and fantasy realm and I hope you like them too.

    I’ve literally read thousands of science fiction and fantasy books over the years. Starting in the 1960s up until today. Some of the stories I’ve read have made significant marks on my life. My degree in engineering is also probably a result of my interests in science and technology from growing up reading the wonder and the vastness of these stories. Here are many of the best books I’ve read and enjoyed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMartin Ettington
    Release dateJun 28, 2020
    ISBN9780463419571
    The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy And Summaries of Great Books to Read
    Author

    Martin Ettington

    The owner Martin K. Ettington is an Engineer by training and has had multiple careers. These include technical sales for GE and HP. Martin also Owns his own software and consulting business.Martin’s interest in the Paranormal and Occult goes back to his childhood. He has had many paranormal experiences and has been a student of Eastern Philosophies and Meditation for 35 years.Seeking Enlightenment; he knows that we are already all Enlightened. We just have to realize this deeply.His books are expressions of his creativity to help others understand what he has internalized through study, experience, and membership in different societies.Not many technical persons or scientists spend a lot of time in parallel studying the Metaphysical and have had many spiritual or psychic experiences too.Therefore, Martin believes that he can provide a unique vantage point to integrate Western Scientific thinking with Eastern exploration of the mind and spirit.

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      The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy And Summaries of Great Books to Read - Martin Ettington

      I love science fiction and fantasy and have read thousands of these books during my life. I started by reading sci fi comic books as a child, then graduated to sci fi novels and fantasy. This genre exposed me to science and technology and is probably one of the main reasons I became an engineer.

      In recent years I’ve written and published my own science fiction novels which gives me more insight on how to write one of these books from the Author’s perspective.

      Although I’ve seen some academic books on the evolution of science fiction I don’t know of any by an avid reader and author on the development of this genre.

      I want you the reader to learn about some of the most fascinating stories I’ve read in science fiction and fantasy so you can enjoy them yourselves.

      The overall science fiction and fantasy genres have developed lots of sub genres too. We will also cover the common themes of these stories and their evolution.

      Finally, there are literally millions of science fiction and fantasy books which have been published so there is no way I can cover even a small fraction of them. Instead I’m focusing on the best novels I’ve read and ones which have become famous as milestones of these genres.

      I’ve also reviewed Hugo Award winner novels to see if I had overlooked any Authors. The most important Hugo award winners are also included here.

      In general I wanted to include all of my favorite sci fi books from the thousands I’ve read and hope that you will choose to read them too.

      For early 20th century authors and later, in each sub chapter on different authors I’ve generally structured them as follows:

      • A picture of the Author or their most famous book

      • My own comments about the Author and the book or series.

      • A summary of the book or series—but not the entire story or you might miss surprises and decide not to read it

      • A Biography or Autobiography of the Author

      2.0 Stories from Older Times

      Epics and Stories from pre-history to older civilizations provide the foundation for science fiction and fantasy. Man has told fantastic stories throughout history.

      2.1 The Epic of Gilgamesh

      The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia that is often regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Bilgamesh (Sumerian for Gilgamesh), king of Uruk, dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100 BC). These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the Old Babylonian version dates to the 18th century BC and is titled after its incipit, Shūtur eli sharrī (Surpassing All Other Kings). Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates from the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru (He who Saw the Abyss, in modern terms: He who Sees the Unknown). Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

      The first half of the story discusses Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk. After Enkidu becomes civilized through sexual initiation with a prostitute, he travels to Uruk, where he challenges Gilgamesh to a test of strength. Gilgamesh wins the contest; nonetheless, the two become friends. Together, they make a six-day journey to the legendary Cedar Forest, where they plan to slay the Guardian, Humbaba the Terrible, and cut down the sacred Cedar. The goddess Ishtar sends the Bull of Heaven to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven after which the gods decide to sentence Enkidu to death and kill him.

      In the second half of the epic, distress over Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually learns that Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Nevertheless, because of his great building projects, his account of Siduri's advice, and what the immortal man Utnapishtim told him about the Great Flood, Gilgamesh's fame survived well after his death with expanding interest in the Gilgamesh story which has been translated into many languages and is featured in works of popular fiction.

      2.2 The Odyssey By Homer

      The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic. The Odyssey is a fundamental work in the modern Western canon, being the oldest extant piece of Western literature, second to the Iliad. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.

      The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myth), king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, Odysseus is assumed to have died, due to which his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres or Proci, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage.

      The work continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. Many scholars believe the original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos (epic poet/singer), perhaps a rhapsode (professional performer), and was more likely intended to be heard than read. The details of the ancient oral performance and the story's conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars.

      2.3 Beowolf An English Epic Poem

      Bēowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating pertains to the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. The anonymous poet is referred to by scholars as the Beowulf poet. The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair.

      Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his thegns or servants, but they do not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon to its lair at Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative Wiglaf, whose name means remnant of valour, dares to join him. Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded in the struggle. He is cremated and a burial mound by the sea is erected in his honor.

      Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poem also begins in medias res or simply, in the middle of things, which is a characteristic of the epics of antiquity. Although the poem begins with Beowulf's arrival, Grendel's attacks have been an ongoing event. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages is spoken of, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repaid, and deeds of valor. The warriors form a kind of brotherhood linked by loyalty to their lord. The poem begins and ends with funerals: at the beginning of the poem for Scyld Scefing (26–45) and at the end for Beowulf (3140–3170).

      2.4 One Thousand and One Nights

      One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. 1706–1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

      The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central and South Asia, and North Africa. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Greek, Jewish and Turkish folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān (Persian: A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements.

      What is common throughout all the editions of the Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryār and his wife Scheherazade and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others are self-contained. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer.

      Some of the stories commonly associated with The Nights, in particular Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, were not part of The Nights in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by Antoine Galland after hearing them from the Christian Maronite storyteller Hanna Diab on Diab's visit to Paris.

      2.5 Dante’s Inferno By Dante Alighieri

      Inferno is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno tells the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen. As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.

      Virgil proceeds to guide Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, representing a gradual increase in wickedness, and culminating at the center of the earth, where Satan is held in bondage. The sinners of each circle are punished for eternity in a fashion fitting their crimes: each punishment is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice. For example, later in the poem, Dante and Virgil encounter fortune-tellers who must walk forward with their heads on backward, unable to see what is ahead, because they tried to see the future through forbidden means. Such a contrapasso functions not merely as a form of divine revenge, but rather as the fulfilment of a destiny freely chosen by each soul during his or her life. People who sinned, but prayed for forgiveness before their deaths are found not in Hell but in Purgatory, where they labor to become free of their sins. Those in Hell are people who tried to justify their sins and are unrepentant.

      2.6 The Tempest-By Shakespeare

      The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where the sorcerer Prospero, a complex and contradictory character, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants—Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes, including magic, betrayal, revenge, and family. In Act IV, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-the play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language.

      Though The Tempest is listed in the First Folio as the first of Shakespeare's comedies, it deals with both tragic and comic themes, and modern criticism has created a category of romance for this and others of Shakespeare's late plays. The Tempest has been put to varied interpretations—from those that see it as a fable of art and creation, with Prospero representing Shakespeare, and Prospero's renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, to interpretations that consider it an allegory of Europeans colonizing foreign lands.

      2.7 Rip Van Winkle By Washington Irving

      Rip Van Winkle Summary

      Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War in a village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains where Rip Van Winkle, a Dutch-American villager, lives. One autumn day, Van Winkle wanders into the mountains with his dog Wolf to escape his wife's nagging. He hears his name called out and sees a man wearing antiquated Dutch clothing; he is carrying a keg up the mountain and requires help. Together, the men and Wolf proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of thunderous noises: a group of ornately dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins.

      Van Winkle does not ask who they are or how they know his name. Instead, he begins to drink some of their liquor and soon falls asleep. When he awakens on the mountain, he discovers shocking changes: his musket is rotting and rusty, his beard is a foot long, and his dog is nowhere to be found. He returns to his village, where he recognizes no one. He arrives just after an election, and people ask how he voted. Never having cast a ballot in his life, he proclaims himself a faithful subject of King George III, unaware that the American Revolution has taken place, and nearly gets himself into trouble with the townspeople until one elderly woman recognizes him as the long-lost Rip Van Winkle.

      King George's portrait on the inn's sign has been replaced with one of George Washington. Van Winkle learns that most of his friends were killed fighting in the American Revolution. He is also disturbed to find another man called Rip Van Winkle; it is his son, now grown up. Van Winkle also discovers that his wife died some time ago but is not saddened by the news. He learns that the men whom he met in the mountains are rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudson's

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