Abstract
This article examines the ruin as a device of cognitive estrangement used in speculative fiction to thematize given conceptualizations of historical time. Drawing on the hypothesis that the fantastic ruin and archaeological methods applied to past futures matured in the European imagination during the early modern age, this research locates twentieth-century fantastic archaeology in the long-standing history of the ruin within speculative imagination. Since the eighteenth century, the remains of the past have synecdochically fostered the idea of a future observer contemplating the ruins of the present. Throughout the nineteenth century, the idea of radical changes to come increasingly incorporated the possibility of disasters, catastrophes, and extinctions and speculations about lost civilizations. This article outlines the connection between these textual genealogies, with a particular focus on English-language literature and twentieth-century pseudo-archaeology that speculates about hyper-evolved terrestrial or alien civilizations in a distant past, through the case study of Peter Kolosimo, an Italian author who compiled his books drawing on sources from many European cultural traditions, and whose works have been translated into several languages, including English. (GI)