Strange Worlds, Lost and Found

ELT : VOLUME 35:4 1992 Hardy's own. In his final years, he chose a continuity of silence. The ending was left open, the possibilities for interpretation and understanding remain innumerable. Collins's final words on the dialogic imagination in Hardy is the wish that "while some themes may lend themselves to parochial summarisation, the study of Hardy's voices" will not be among them. Franklin E. Court Northern Illinois University Strange Worlds, Lost and Found Everett F. Bleiler. Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1990. xxiii + 988 pp. $75.00 THIS BOOK is clearly, in the best sense, the work of a devotee. Everett Bleiler has produced a nearly thousand-page book, in an oversized format, that includes not only extensive abstracts for novels, short stories, and some plays, but also an introduction and various indices for authors, titles, motifs, themes, dates, arid periodicals. The 2,475 writings covered in this book range from the classical period to 1930, which is often used to demarcate the emergence of modern science-fiction. The abstracts for these writings are detailed and usually followed with a brief evaluative observation. Spot-checking indicated that Bleiler's bibliographic data and plot summaries are accurate. The short biographical presentations of the authors, including their dates, also withstood random review. Likewise Bleiler has noted pseudonyms, when they occur, as exemplified by his identification of Chesney Weatherby as C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne. Place and date of first publication, often extremely difficult to discover, are frequently given, and selective sampling proved them to be accurate, too. Although Bleiler does not note if or in what way the items in his inventory were revised in their various versions—e. g., Wells slightly edited "In the Abyss" and Hyne substantially modified "The Lizard"—I doubt that we ought to expect him to have done so. In short, Bleiler's book appears to be a very reliable reference tool. ELT readers will find much to value in this compilation, especially since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide the bulk of the entries. They will be grateful for synopses of little-known or extremely hard-to-find works by the relatively recognized writers during this time. They will also be grateful for similar synopses for even rarer or more obscure publications by utterly forgotten authors who in 486 BOOK REVIEWS their day may have been read by the authors we regard in our time. For example, Wells read a considerable amount of what today we might designate as "junk literature," and he, like many of his contemporaries, occasionally appropriated such ephemera for the purposes of revision, enhancement, or parody. With Bleiler's volume, an author's stray allusion or a critic's stray suspicion has a better chance of being resolved. In other words, Bleiler's detailed annotations allow for a richer contextualization of those turn-of-the-century authors who matter most to us today. These annotations, furthermore, might even encourage the identification of a few other presently overlooked writers or works worthy of careful reconsideration. In a review of this volume Tom Easton wrote: "Serious scholars of SF might kill for it, but I don't expect many other individuals will want to own a copy" (Analog, 111 [October, 1991], 167). I understand his hesitation , but I think he is wrong. This book deserves to find an approving audience well beyond science-fiction critics, and even beyond ELT scholars . Bleiler's tome is an invaluable, meticulous resource, not in the least expensive considering the average selling price these days of university press books of a mere 250 pages. Moreover, Bleiler's effort exudes an exuberant care, a keen devotion, that many readers, I am sure, will find a delightful incentive to keep company with Science Fiction: The Early Years. William J. Scheick University of Texas at Austin The Reappearance of Miss Miles Mary Taylor. Miss Miles: A Tale of Yorkshire Life Sixty Years Ago. Intro. Janet H. Murray. 1890; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. xxviii + 466 pp. $29.95 THE TITLE of this 1890 novel is deceiving, leading the reader to the natural assumption that Sarah Miles—the plucky young village girl in...