Artistic analysis of Fantasy and Sci-Fi?

Speculative fiction is the more popular term in critical circles, if you're going to dig into it.

Hey, thanks for all the replies and sorry to take so long to answer, I've been checking the books out a bit before commenting.

Basically, what I'm looking for here is an explanation on how the genre evolved, when it became cynical and thought robots would kill you and when it was optimistic and thought we would reach transcendence. Or how The Lord of the Rings impacted the genre when it was first released. I simply know nothing of the genres beyond the books, I can't place them into a timeline not do I understand how one lead to the other. So yeah, perhaps I'm more interested in the history of it instead of artistic analysis per se.

The Road to Middle Earth sounds quite awesome, though

ldsdbomber wrote: I might even have this upstairs, and I could send it to you if you want to pay for the postage. But surely you could find it cheaply over there anyway

I really appreciate the offer but as you say, it would be better for me to find a cheap copy anyways.

Thank you