When I started out my Leverhulme Professorship in the UK, I really enjoyed my work on the “Progressive Fantastic”, a new form of the genre in contemporary German literature. I did some lectures, which you can read or listen to, if you like (here). And I got a book contract to write a whole book about the phenomenon with the lovely Lever Press. And then, life got in the way and I never wrote that book.

I got two chapters ready and never had the time or energy to finish it. Getting the chapters out to journals or something seemed just as useless as they would require more work, which I was not able to commit to. So, either I could just forget about it, or I could actually make this work by publishing them here, on my own webpage. And since I really enjoyed the work, think the world of the novels and stories that I wrote about, I figured, you the reading public should at least be able to enjoy them too. So, here are two chapters from the book that never was …