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Octavo, pp. [1-2: blank] [3-8] 1-206 [207-208: blank], publisher's purple cloth, spine panel stamped in black. First edition. Eccentric science fiction novel, including successful communication with Mars in the twenty-first century and a visit to the secret city of advanced and seemingly ageless mutants or descendants of ancient Egyptians hidden underground at the magnetic North Pole. The work was probably self-published. "A curious work whose obsession with the symbolism of electricity recalls the previous generation. The hidden underground city is called The Electric City; characters -- when they're not journeying on the astral plane -- get around in aero-cars 'operated by radium energy and liquid air.' The writing is amateurish and careless, which generates confusing inconsistencies, but the artlessness increases the transparency of the work as a psychological projection, making the whole read in some ways like the transcription of a dream. The story begins on Mars after an opera performance, when three young children, playing air polo with balls made of condensed atmosphere, get too excited and stray too far from the surface of the planet and its meager gravitational field. 'In another instant they had become enveloped and lost in the purple haze surrounding them and all three vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as had their balls.' The main story tracks the fortunes of the three, reincarnated as adults in Salt Lake City in the twenty-first century. In addition to the advanced, idealized world of Mars, Earth and the interior world of Earth, the story culminates in the establishment of a grand new utopia on Earth. This follows a violin concert (!) that is much more than that: with the aid of 'tone magnifiers' and 'transformers' that translate music into color and vice versa (The Electric City had a Cave of Musical Diamonds embodying similar principles), the concert succeeds in finally establishing a secure link on Earth for people to hear 'the melody from Mars.' The concert climaxes with a planetary convulsion ('But another moon had been born and where water had been land appeared. And where mountains were there rolled the billows of a mighty ocean .') that purges all selfishness from the planet. 'A new era, the spiritual age -- the age of the superman -- had dawned.' A very odd book." - Robert Eldridge. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, Additions. Teitler and Locke, By the World Forgot (2013) 752. Bleiler (1978), p. 123. Reginald 07378. Eaton catalogue II, p. 297. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 L-207. Not in Lewis or Negley; not in Clarke, Tale of the Future or Locke, Spectrum of Fantasy (I-III). Owner's signature dated 1926 on the front free endpaper. Spine lettering dull, a very good copy. (#174228). Seller Inventory # 174228
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