The Well of the Unikcorn by Fletcher Pratt instant download

The Well of the Unikcorn by Fletcher Pratt instant download

Direct ancestors are easy enough to find. One might mention Oz and Barsoom, the fairy tale, and early adventure science fiction. Mythical cities and countries have always been with us, from Prester John's kingdom onward, but L. Frank Baum, in his Oz series, deliberately created a whole kingdom, totally unrelated to anywhere we knew, with its own geography and political structure. In his Mars books, Edgar Rice Burroughs presented a whole world subject only to its own laws.

Science fiction went on to create worlds in plenty, but all had at least one foot in a hypothetical reality. Writers of "pure" fantasy and its sister, horror fiction, created lost civilizations. The pulp adventure writers of the  thirties wrote tales of our own Earth's past, but a past found in no history book and not even in the myths of any recognizable culture. These tales were usually flavored with heroic adventure and had more than a touch of magic, since if one is creating one's own world, magic is bound to add glamor not found in our own.