ALKON, Paul K(ent)

(1935-)

   Professor of English Literature at the University of Southern California and author of Origins of Futuristic Fiction (1987), a vigorous study of the idea of the future that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as reflected in the fiction and literary theory of the time. PA resuscitated the almost forgotten figure of Felix Bodin, arguably the first to provide (in 1834) an aesthetics of sf, his theories - appropriately futuristic - antedating their subject matter. Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology (1994) is a competent introductory survey.