Books by Paul K. Alkon

Alkon examines the earliest works of prose fiction set in future time, the forgotten writings of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries that are the precursors of well-known masterpieces of the form by H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell.

Alkon offers first a study of time in Defoe's fiction that shows Defoe's relevance to issues now central to criticism of the novel; relationships between narrative time and clock time, the influence of time concepts shared by writers and their audience, and the questions of how fiction shapes the phenomenal time of reading.

Paul Alkon concentrates on several key works that mark the most significant phases in the early evolution of science fiction, setting them in the context of their time and place of origin. He goes on to discuss the genre in general and its relation to other kinds of literature.