Part of a three-volume publication, this text is a critical history of the utopian vision and an exploration of the possible reality of utopia. Even as the world has rejected the doctrine on which Bloch sought to base his utopia, his work still challenges us to think more insightfully about our own visions of a better world. This first volume lays the foundations of the philosophy of process and introduces the idea of the "not-yet-conscious" - the anticipatory element that Bloch sees as central to human thought. It also contains an account of the aesthetic interpretations of utopian "wishful images" in fairy tales, popular fiction, travel, theatre, dance and the cinema.