Background
Stover, Leon was born on April 9, 1929 in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of George Franklin and Helen Elizabeth (Haines) Stover.
(Initiated during the Former Han Dynasty in 136 B.C., the ...)
Initiated during the Former Han Dynasty in 136 B.C., the state cult of Confucius endured for 2407 years as the civil religion of a vast empire that ever-renewed itself despite periodic disunity and barbarian conquests. This was a weak agrarian state whose foundation was a Neolithic peasantry, whose archaic state-idea traces to the dawn of Chinese civilization, and whose ruling elite earned its credentials in civil service examinations based on classic Confucianism dating to pre-imperial times - all centered on the political thinking of a late Bronze Age philosopher. This work explores the political logic of old China's archaic civilization, where court protocol was the very essence of a liturgical government whose philosophical basis rested on the scriptural authority of Confucian teachings. Here is the historical paradox (vast empire, weak state) resolved in this book. By looking into the state cult of Confucius and its origins, the illogical begins to look reasonable for the pre-modern conditions of antiquity. Over 100 photographs and drawings are included, along with an appendix covering the Great Chinese Museum of New York.
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(Stonehenge, the megalithic monument in southern England t...)
Stonehenge, the megalithic monument in southern England that dates in its Bronze Age phase to 2000BC, attracts more than a million tourists each year. The region includes the remains of sizeable wooden buildings, and this work shows that it was indeed its own city, the metropolitan centre of a powerful kingdom heretofore unsuspected. That city is reconstructed here from the archaeological evidence - royal palace, banquet hall and tomb, among other buildings. In passing, the text demolishes the popular theory that Stonehenge served as a prehistoric astronomical observatory. It rather advances a political theory grounded in cultural continuities that carry forward into the early Iron Age, best documented in ancient Ireland.
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(Critics view When the Sleeper Wakes as a prototype of the...)
Critics view When the Sleeper Wakes as a prototype of the anti-utopian novel, a genre developed by Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell into nightmare futures associated with the totalitarian age and the moral horrors of fascism and communism. Annotated by the world's leading Wellsian scholar, in Sleeper is found a greater measure of artistry and characterization than is usually accorded it. As a complex work combining technological with social speculation, Sleeper is unmatched for canniness in the history of futuristic literature. Indeed, its aeronautical details influenced the Wright Brothers in the design of their flyer, and the novel predicts the promotion of airplanes as a weapon, a prophecy dramatically fulfilled in the twentieth century. This exhaustive critical edition features a lengthy introduction, appendices, bibliography and index, and a frontispiece taken from the original 1899 edition.
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(The Time Machine is one of the most enduring works of the...)
The Time Machine is one of the most enduring works of the English language. A hundred years after it was first published, the book continues to be studied. The 1895 London first edition is used as a basis for the exhaustive annotations and other critical apparatus of the world's foremost Wellsian scholar. The widely reprinted version of 1924 is also fully accounted for. For most students, one of the chief points of interest is what the novel signified to readers when it was first published and how it relates to Wells's later works. Accordingly, the annotations focus on these questions. The introduction gives in great depth the background of the work and its complex bibliographical history, and a synopsis of the literary conventions that Wells used.
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(As a publisher's category, science fiction began in the A...)
As a publisher's category, science fiction began in the American pulp magazine industry in 1926. But its origins lay in the British tradition of the scientific romance, whose mastery by H.G. Wells in his Victorian youth (1895-1901) makes him the "father of modern SF" (Jules Verne is a more distant ancestor). Wells's most self-conscious descendant is Robert Heinlein, whose rapid rise to fame during the magazine era made him "the dean of American SF." He so succeeded in winning literary recognition for the genre that it all but vanished into the mainstream, save for a lingering identity in classified paperbacks and in television programming (Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, for example, was marketed as general fiction and not science fiction). The present work, by a man who taught the subject at the university level for decades, is a critical examination of the literary trajectory of science fiction from the scientific romances of H.G. Wells to the era of Robert Heinlein. Such luminaries as Isaac Asimov (I, Robot), Arthur C. Clarke (2001), A.E. van Vogt (Slan), L. Sprague de Camp (Lest Darkness Fall), Harry Harrison (Stars and Stripes Forever trilogy), Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan), Brian Aldiss (Greybeard), Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom series, Pellucidar series), Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles), Fritz Leiber (The Wanderer), C.S. Lewis (Perelandra), and Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World) are discussed along the way. The roles of various magazines in establishing the genre, an area of the author's special expertise, are fully examined (Hugo Gernsback's Science and Invention, Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales, among others).
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(Three brave warriors--a prince from an ancient house, a f...)
Three brave warriors--a prince from an ancient house, a former envoy of the Pharaoh, and the daughter of the Albi--struggle against an empire to establish a new world order around the monument at Stonehenge. Reprint.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0586062041/?tag=2022091-20
(Wells' novel, a "scientific romance," attained perhaps it...)
Wells' novel, a "scientific romance," attained perhaps its greatest fame in another form, the infamous realistic 1939 radio broadcast "Invasion from Mars" by the redoubtable Orson Welles. It was also notably made into an early fifties science fiction adventure movie (and there have been other adaptations as well). So indelible is the association that the novel, like the panic inducing broadcast and the Hollywood flick, now is taken as little more than a light fantasy of outerspace terror and human heroism, far from the author's original vision. The War of the Worlds is a philosophical tale and as such, is profoundly ideological. The world of the Martians represents the progressive future of humanity in a cultural war with our world of tradition and reaction--these are the two worlds in question. The Mars from which the invaders come is united by a planet-wide system of irrigation canals; for Wells this indicates a socialist world-state. The red planet is red in more than one sense, pointing the direction of terrestrial progress. The Martians in the novel are octopoidal monsters, bodily anticipating the tentacular, all-controlling totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786468726/?tag=2022091-20
(The First Men in the Moon is the last in a series of "sci...)
The First Men in the Moon is the last in a series of "scientific romances" begun by Wells with The Time Machine. In the opinion of many, it is also the last in a series of pessimistic and anti-utopian novels before Wells took up the tone of an optimistic and utopian social prophet with Anticipations. The present critical edition of First Men questions that opinion. The lunar utopia described is far from a satire on the industrial order as many critics claim, but in historical context is instead related to the international scientific management movement, stemming from the Saint-Simonian school of socialism. This critical edition shows how First Men consciously builds on the whole literary tradition of moon voyages.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786468742/?tag=2022091-20
critic writer anthropology professor
Stover, Leon was born on April 9, 1929 in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of George Franklin and Helen Elizabeth (Haines) Stover.
Bachelor, Western Maryland College, 1950. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Western Maryland College, 1980. Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1952.
Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1962.
Instructor American Museum Natural History, New York City, 1955-1957. Assistant professor Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, 1957-1963. Visiting assistant professor Tokyo University, 1963-1965.
Associate professor Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, 1966-1974, professor anthropology, 1974-1994. Professor emeritus, 1995. Founder, 1st chairman John W. Campbell Memorial Award, 1972.
Guest lecturer British Film Institute, 1986. Humanities consultant Champaign Public Library H.G. Wells Traveling Exhibition, Illinois, 1986.
(Critics view When the Sleeper Wakes as a prototype of the...)
(Three brave warriors--a prince from an ancient house, a f...)
(Wells' novel, a "scientific romance," attained perhaps it...)
(Stonehenge, the megalithic monument in southern England t...)
(The First Men in the Moon is the last in a series of "sci...)
(As a publisher's category, science fiction began in the A...)
("An instant novel of ideas, after the manner of Thomas Lo...)
(The Time Machine is one of the most enduring works of the...)
(Initiated during the Former Han Dynasty in 136 B.C., the ...)
(Book by Stover, Leon E)
Member H.G. Wells Society, Science Fiction Writers American.
Married Takeko Kawai, October 12, 1956.