Michael Saler on Muck Rack

Michael Saler

Berkeley
As seen in: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner, The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, Magzter Inc., The Times Literary Supplement
Covers:  History, philosophy, art, mass culture, science fiction, fantasy, comics, religion, science
Doesn't Cover: sports, math, dance, cooking

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Michael Saler’s Biography

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Author of The Avant-Garde in Interwar England (Oxford UP, 1999) and As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (Oxford UP, 2012); editor of The Fin-de-Siecle World (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor of The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford UP, 2009). Currently working on a history of fantasy as a defining feature of modernity.

Michael Saler’s Journalist Portfolio

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‘Icons of the Fantastic’ Review: From Paris to the Pulps

‘Icons of the Fantastic’ Review: From Paris to the Pulps

Themes of the fabulous and the unreal went from cultural acclaim to critical disdain relatively quickly. This…

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Review: "Douglas Adams: To The Ends of the Earth

Review: "Douglas Adams: To The Ends of the Earth

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Going underground: R. Crumb’s Multitudes

Going underground: R. Crumb’s Multitudes

Review of Dan Nadel’s CRUMB.

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Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact’ Review: An Education in Exoplanets

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact’ Review: An Education in Exoplanets

Researchers were surprised to find giant gas planets orbiting quite near to their stars. Yet novelists had al…

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Review of Gregory Maguire, ELPHIE

Review of Gregory Maguire, ELPHIE

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Review, Mark Lilla, “Ignorance and Bliss”

Review, Mark Lilla, “Ignorance and Bliss”

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Articles

‘The Murder Game’ Review: All the Clues Were There

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By Michael Saler
| The Wall Street Journal Verified
In his “Poetics,” Aristotle praised detective fiction for demonstrating “the art of framing lies.” Or so Dorothy Sayers claimed in a witty 1935 lecture on the puzzle-plot mysteries that arose during the genre’s golden age in the 1920s and ’30s. Sayers commended the philosopher for anticipating “the great modern theory of fair-play” that defined these works: The author must present all the clues necessary for solving the mystery while misleading the reader about their import.
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From Paris to the Pulps

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By Michael Saler
| Magzter Inc. Verified
This story is from the November 22, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Subscribe to Magzter GOLD to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 10,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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‘Icons of the Fantastic’ Review: From Paris to the Pulps

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By Michael Saler
| The Wall Street Journal Verified
Henri-Pierre Picou’s “Andromeda Chained to a Rock” (1874) depicts a buxom, naked woman held prisoner on a promontory; a bat-faced monster threatening her; and a muscular, semiclad young man wielding a severed Gorgon’s head in one hand and a sword in the other. Although similar imagery would grace the covers of salacious pulp magazines after World War I, there was a difference between Picou’s era and that of the pulps.
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Interview

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Have you ever used a typewriter?

Yes

Who's your favorite fictional journalist?

Geraldo Rivera

Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?

Yes. Editorial and columnist.
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