The oldest known story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was written on clay tablets more than 3,000 years ago. In it the king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, travels to the ocean at the end of the known world on a quest for knowledge and immortality. The merest touch of the water there will bring instant death, and the stone charms which could have protected the ship have been-destroyed. But Gilgamesh cannot rest until he has crossed to the far side of the deadly sea. He boards the ship despite the fact that he may not make the crossing alive. As our world was discovered and mapped, heroes no longer needed to travel In small and fragile craft across deadly and inhospitable oceans. The development of sailing ships, first of wood and then of iron and steel, means that the oceans of today hold little peril, and there are no new lands to conquer on the Earth. The world is smaller now,' and to find new challenges the heroes of today's fantastical stories are forced to leave this planet behind to find the unexplained and the weird, the beautiful and the monstrous. But still they must travel through hostile, deadly waters.
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