Description: Television series like Star Trek and movies like Star Wars may bedazzle us with special effects and futuristic technologies, but the stories they tell are thousands of years old. The adventures of the Enterprise crew bear a remarkable resemblance to quests chronicled by ancient sea-faring civilizations, and the story of Luke Skywalker contains narrative archetypes found in cultures around the world.
Once upon a Galaxy is an anthology of the original folklore behind some of these most popular stories and characters of the twentieth century: not only Star Wars and Star Trek but also Superman, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and the much-loved cartoon trickster, Bugs Bunny. We learn that Tolkien drew heavily from the tales of magic rings and broken swords of Norse Mythology, and Bugs Bunny has ancestors in the animal tricksters of Native American legend. The stories collected in Once upon a Galaxy, in their many guises, have captivated culture after culture, generation after generation.