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eBook Category: Science Fiction/History Hugo Award Winner
eBook Description: In 1990, Alexei and Cory Panshin's massive history of science fiction, The World Beyond the Hill, won the Hugo award in competition with books by Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula LeGuin, and Harlan Ellison. Isaac Asimov called it, "The best, the BEST, history of science fiction I have ever read." Exploring the genre from its roots in the Romantic Period to the late 20th century, the Panshins make the case for science fiction as modern mythology. The ElectricStory edition includes hyperlinked contents, index, and notes sections for easy navigation.

eBook Publisher: Electricstory.com, Published: 1989
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2002

27 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [3.2 MB], eReader (PDB) [972 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [1.0 MB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [899 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [1.2 MB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [794 KB], hiebook (KML) [2.2 MB], Sony Reader (LRF) [933 KB], iSilo (PDB) [871 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [1.1 MB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [1.1 MB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [1.4 MB]
Words: 299876
Reading time: 856-1199 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

There simply is no better history of science fiction available. The Panshins love the genre, and take you on an illuminating tour. Highly recommended. -Robert J. Sawyer, Fictionwise Recommender

"The best, the BEST, history of science fiction I have ever read."--Isaac Asimov

"I learned a great deal from The World Beyond the Hill."--Northrup Frye

"This is a masterful and an utterly fascinating book, of interest to anyone who ponders how we in modern society got to where we are and where we are likely to go from here. Science fiction is shown by the Panshins to be a heretofore relatively unnoticed factor in societal change--the mythic element in a society that for three centuries has turned its back on spirit-based myth."--Willis Harman, author of Higher Creativity and Global Mind Change

"This fascinating book makes it clear that science fiction is indeed the visionary literature of our civilization, and a much needed source of vitality."--Charles T. Tart, author of Open Mind, Discriminating Mind

"A landmark of literary historiography."--L. Sprague de Camp

"The basic premises of the book are FINE, the insights truly eye-opening."--Ben Bova

"Really marvelous. It is obviously THE classic history of science fiction."--Colin Wilson

For as long as we humans have existed in our present intermediate state as creatures more than merely animal but also less human than we can be and will be, there have been mythic storytellers. These are men and women who have taken the best knowledge of their time and place and combined it with a sense of the incompleteness of mankind and the fundamental mystery of existence, and then told stories of higher possibility: Stories of fear and wonder. Stories of quest into unknown lands and return with magical gifts which transform the world. Stories of the beginning and the end of all things.

The myths that we learn as we are growing up provide us with guidance in life. In their conservative aspect, myths confirm us in our localness. They teach us how to be a citizen of Rome, a Huichol Indian, or a contemporary American. But far more important is that in their radical aspect, myths alert us to the limitations of how we presently live and who we take ourselves to be, and lead us on toward what we are not yet.

By the manner in which we conduct ourselves and the goals for which we strive, we attempt to make our myths come true in the world. The efforts we make change the world and alter our knowledge. Then new myths become necessary.

The myth of the modern Western world has been science fiction. The ability of this literature to guide our efforts and set our goals can be seen all around us.

The submarine that first traveled to the North Pole--the first nuclear-powered ship--was named the Nautilus after the superscientific submarine of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. And its commander would later say that he had been inspired to become a submariner by reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a youngster.

The idea that an atomic bomb might actually be made first came to a physicist who had originally encountered the concept of atomic weapons in a story by H. G. Wells.

An orbital shuttle--an almost-spaceship--has been named the Enterprise after the galaxy-exploring spaceship imagined in the television series Star Trek.

The world that we live in has been formed in the image of the myth of science fiction. Anything we use today may have been made by a robot. Children play interactive games with household computers, and thinking machines play championship-level chess. Men in rockets have traveled to the moon, and we have even sent off greetings to the stars.

The story of the complete life cycle of this myth is presented in this book, beginning with the first faint glimmerings that "science" might be a new name for higher possibility, and ending with modern mythmakers able to imagine that mankind might assume control of its own destiny, establish a galaxy-wide stellar empire, and evolve into a higher order of being.

For those who are interested in the dynamics of myth, this book tells how a new myth comes into being, how the makers of myth conceive and produce their stories, how myth both responds to worldly change and anticipates it, and how one myth at the conclusion of its usefulness may evolve into another.

For those who have love for the myth of science fiction, this book shows where its central ideas and images came from and how they developed, from a time prior to the point when this literature even had a name up until the moment of crisis and opportunity when mythmakers came to the realization that their sense of higher human potential could no longer be contained by the name "science" and began to use another.

And for those with dreams of a sounder, more holistic, more human way of life beyond the fragmentation and purposelessness which presently dominate our society, this book indicates not only how our myths change us, but how we change our myths. It shows how the storytellers of SF, having come to recognize the limitations of a world built upon scientific materialism, altered their myth and laid down the basis for a new age of higher consciousness.