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The Pleasures of a Futuroscope
Lord Dunsany, Irish master of fantasy, was the author of more than a dozen novels, hundreds of short stories, poems, and essays, and dozens of plays. And yet, his last major work, The Pleasures of a Futuroscope, has remained unpublished until this edition. In this powerful and moving novel, written in 1955, a futuroscope--a device that allows a viewer to see into the near or distant future--reveals an awful fate for a nuclear holocaust has destroyed nearly all human life on the planet. The great city of London is now merely an immense crater, filled in with water from the Thames. The pitiful remnants of humanity have been reduced to a Stone Age existence. The narrator, obsessively looking through the futuroscope, focuses upon the plight of a single family in their struggles to survive and fend off the many enemies, both animal and human, that surround them. When one of their number is kidnapped by a band of gypsies, we can only wonder at her fate in this brave new world of the distant future. Gripping, horrifying, touching, and fascinating, The Pleasures of a Futuroscope shows that Lord Dunsany retained his literary powers undiminished to the end of his life.
- GenresFictionTime Travel
204 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
Lord Dunsany
648 books803 followersEdward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 4, 2018
Brobdingnagian paragraphs, loosely constructed and meandering. A narrator whose innocent and 'amusement' (that word is used thickly) belie the author's own considered primal-scream views. And most offensively, it's _dull_.
Couldn't stand it, didn't finish it.
Couldn't stand it, didn't finish it.
June 25, 2018
It reads like the prose version of an endless stroll down a facebook-feed. Waiting for something of interest, for anything, to happen. It is in a way a brilliant account of the future we live in, but without the dopamine rush of a political cartoon or funny cat pic so now and then. It’s a sad ending to a brilliant career. After the great war, the real magic in was already gone. But there was still joie de vivre in his work. Or as he called it in his 1938 autobiography: there were patches of sunlight. After World War II there was only sadness and fear. This book reflects his state of mind at the end of his life. It’s not a novel. It’s a lamentation.
Beautifully printed, delivered by S.T.Joshi.
Beautifully printed, delivered by S.T.Joshi.
November 28, 2009
Like most posthumous novels, not very good, unfortunately. Didn't read like the Dunsany I've read - could have been passed off as Wells.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews