The Elixir of Youth has been sought after by many! But what happens when you find it? What happens when it exceeds the wildest expectations of the scientists?

This study provides the first substantial history and analysis of the To-Day and To-Morrow series of 110 books, published by Kegan Paul Trench and Trübner (and E. P. Dutton in the USA) from 1923 to 1931, in which writers chose a topic, described its present, and predicted its future. Contributors included J. B. S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Vernon Lee, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Sylvia Pankhurst, Hugh MacDiarmid, James Jeans, J. D. Bernal, Winifred Holtby, André Maurois, and many others. The study combines a comprehensive account of its interest, history, and range with a discussion of its key concerns, tropes, and influence. The argument focuses on science and technology, not only as the subject of many of the volumes, but also as method--especially through the paradigm of the human sciences--applied to other disciplines; and as a source of metaphors for representing other domains. It also includes chapters on war, technology, cultural studies, and literature and the arts. This book aims to reinstate the series as a vital contribution to the writing of modernity, and to reappraise modernism's relation to the future, establishing a body of progressive writing which moves beyond the discourses of post-Darwinian degeneration and post-war disenchantment, projecting human futures rather than mythic or classical pasts. It also shows how, as a co-ordinated body of futurological writing, the series is also revealing about the nature and practices of modern futurology itself.

Complementing Science-Fiction: The Early Years, which surveys science-fiction published in book form from its beginnings through 1930, the present volume covers all the science-fiction printed in the genre magazines--Amazing, Astounding, and Wonder, along with offshoots and minor magazines--from 1926 through 1936. This is the first time this historically important literary phenomenon, which stands behind the enormous modern development of science-fiction, has been studied thoroughly and accurately. The heart of the book is a series of descriptions of all 1,835 stories published during this period, plus bibliographic information. Supplementing this are many useful features: detailed histories of each of the magazines, an issue by issue roster of contents, a technical analysis of the art work, brief authors' biographies, poetry and letter indexes, a theme and motif index of approximately 30,0000 entries, and general indexes. Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years is not only indispensable for reference librarians, collectors, readers, and scholars interested in science-fiction, it is also of importance to the study of popular culture during the Great Depression in the United States. Most of its data, which are largely based on rare and almost unobtainable sources, are not available elsewhere.

From Madman to Crime Fighter is the most comprehensive study of the image of the scientist in Western literature and film.

Thornton and Belmont embark on an adventure to find the lost city of El Dorado. excerpt"What do you make of those?" Thornton asked, as he tossed two bits of shining yellow metal upon the table. Belmont, the mining engineer, picked up the objects and examined them curiously. They were obviously gold; thin, crescent-shaped; perhaps two inches in length by an inch in width, and with small eyes or rings at the points of the crescents."They're gold of course," he replied. "Indian ornaments of some sort, I should say.""Yes, you're right both times," laughed Thornton. "But do you realize that you are holding something which no white man since Raleigh's day has ever seen? Those things, Frank, are the 'gold moons' that Sir Walter Raleigh reported having seen in the noses of Guiana Indians.""Jove, is that so!" exclaimed the other. "Discovered a lost tribe, eh? Bully for you. What were they, freaks, cannibals or Amazons?""Neither," declared the explorer, who had recently returned from months in the interior of Guiana and Brazil, and who was dining with his old college chum."The people who wore these," he continued, "are quite ordinary in as far as appearances go. But they prove that Raleigh was right, and, this is what may interest you, the tribe that uses the moons has a secret, unlimited supply of gold.""What?" cried the engineer, instantly interested. "I suppose you mean that they have a rich placer mine. Now you're talking business, old man.""I thought that would wake you up," laughed the explorer. "I can't say as to the placer. Did you ever hear of El Dorado and the City of Manoa?"

What seemed like a simple experiment to figure out how the ancient stones were cut released an ancient horror.