Michael Tondre (introduction) is an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University and author of two books: *The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction Science and Gender* (2018) and *Oil* (forthcoming). His writing has also appeared in journals such as *PMLA*, *ELH*, *Victorian Studies*, *Victorian Literature and Culture*, and *Nineteenth-Century Literature*, and has recently received the 2018 Schachterle Essay Prize (from the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts) and the 2019 Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Article Prize.