Pat Hauldren

“History teaches everything including the future,” said Alphonse de Lamartine, a French writer, poet, and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.

And that’s no different for writing and the genres we write in.

With the British publication in Oct. 1955 of THE RETURN OF THE KING (1956 in the US), completing the LORD OF THE RINGERS trilogy, fantasy underwent a profound change. Although the impact and influence of Tolkien’s famed chronicle was initially a muted, underground one, its paperback appearance in 1965 from Ballantine in the US (compounded by an earlier semi-pirated edition released by Ace, which took advantage of a lapse in the copyright registration of the trilogy) was to make it in effect one of the twentieth century’s major “cult” books and transformed the fortunes of the genre for better and for worse.

But science fiction (and hence fantasy) began long before that, as far back as 634 when Johannes Kepler described weightlessness in his SOMNIUM.

This class is for anyone interested in the history of science fiction and fantasy and how it impacts what we write today. No prerequisite is required.

Class length is flexible.

upcoming classes:

July 7, 2011 — Moon Day Event for National Space Society of North Texas at the Frontiers of Flight Museum