Fantastic fiction is traditionally understood as Western genre literature such as fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Expanding on this understanding, these essays explore how the fantastic has been used in Western societies since the Middle Ages as a tool for organizing and materializing abstractions in order to make sense of the present social order. Disciplines represented here include literature studies, gender studies, biology, ethnology, archeology, history, religion, game studies, cultural sociology, and film studies. Individual essays cover topics such as the fantastic creatures of medieval chronicle, mummy medicine in eighteenth-century Sweden, how fears of disease filtered through the universal and adaptable vampire, the gender aspects of goddess worship in the secular West, ecocentrism in fantasy fiction, how videogames are dealing with the remediation of heritage, and more.

Why doesn't Berra have a grandfather? And how can he get one? There are plenty of old men at the retirement home, Ulf suggests. They go there together to find one-ideally one who eats pig's trotters, invites you to tea and can teach you to whistle. Can You Whistle, Johanna? is an international award-winner and classic in many countries by one of the world's great writers.

Why doesn't Berra have a grandfather? And how can he get one? Ulf suggests that there are plenty of old men at the retirement home. Berra and Ulf go there together to find one--ideally one who eats pig's trotters, invites you to tea, and can teach you to whistle. A funny, sensitive, illustrated chapter book about a friendship across generations. Stark's writing covers every emotion, sometimes in the same sentence.