Hi guys!

I've had so much fun writing the Explorer Fiction class! The whole business of going into the Unknown and discovering wonders which illuminate your inner self has always fascinated me. We get to play with Marco Polo, Prester John (again!), Christopher Columbus, and a few more conquistadores for good measure.
Then there's the 19th century burst of explorer fiction -- H. G. Wells! Jules Verne! Conan Doyle! Doyle's The Lost World is an awesome tale of finding dinosaurs still alive in the South American jungle that is nothing at all like the movie Jurassic Park. His White Company is an amazing 14th century drama about the French-English wars, starring the invincible Sir Nigel Loring. Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth has been made into over a dozen movies (I personally have six of them).  Can we count H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, where the Martians go into the Unknown to find us? I guess not. Shucks. What about The Matrix? Sure, why not? In that case, the world the hero leaves is the world of illusion -- the Unknown he discovers is the world the way it really is! That can be set against George Russell's weird descriptions of seeing beautiful cities and beings of light while he was walking on the moors of England. Now let's see, was he leaving the world of illusion and journeying to reality -- or was he leaving reality and journeying to illusion?

You can see the Explorer Fiction pattern can lead to a million variations, and it sure has! People never get tired of it. This is going to be one of the fun classes, for sure.