The preface to the 1957 edition of Jorge Luis Borges’ collection of essays The Book of Imaginary Beings (幻兽辞典) contains the comment that monsters will always stalk mythic stories because real animals are a deeply important part of human experience and because monstrous beings are combinations of the real and the imagined, the stuff of nightmares and dreams. The Classical mythic centaur, which melds the forms of man and horse, has its Celtic counterpart in the Welsh horse-woman, Rhiannon. The Cretan Minotaur (米诺陶洛斯), a hideous blend of bull and human, can perhaps be seen transmuted in Irish mythology to become the great fighting bulls of Ulster and Connacht, which had human speech and understanding, or, in Wales, the enchanted boar Twrch Trwyth (图鲁夫图鲁维斯). Borges even goes so far as to argue that monsters are ‘necessary’ for human society. In our own day, fascinated by space and the possibility of worlds beyond, we conjure up fantastic images of galactic monsters, nowhere more clearly presented than in the Star Wars cantina, in which Skywalker and Solo encounter a collection of weird and wonderful beings from all over the Universe. Such are our modern mythic creations. 26