Item #24975 THE WORLD BELOW. Wright, Fowler.

THE WORLD BELOW ...

New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1930. Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v-viii 1-344, original gray cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First U.S. edition. The U.S. edition adds a preface by Wright dated "New York, January 15, 1930" that did not appear in the 1929 Collins edition. A superior novel in which Wright explores human evolution based on degeneration of the race due primarily to continual destruction of past civilizations through the misuse of scientific discoveries. Comprises "The Amphibians," first published in book form in 1925, and its sequel, "The World Below," first published here. A third book was planned but never written. The story is "set in the far future, when humans are extinct and forgotten... the time traveling protagonist accidentally precipitates a crisis in the affairs of a race of telepathic Amphibians who coexist with the giant humanoid Dwellers... the first part [is] an imaginative tour de force." - Anatomy of Wonder (1981) 2-128. THE AMPHIBIANS is "a work comparable in its scope only to [Wells's ] THE TIME MACHINE and [Hodgson's] THE NIGHT LAND." - Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950, pp. 183-85. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 3-72; (1981) 2-128; (1987) 2-144; (1995) 2-154; and (2004) II-1293. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 2437. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 833. Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 58. Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (1973), p. 150. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 235. Negley, Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 1217. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, pp. 188. Survey of Science Fiction Literature V, pp. 2497-2500. In 333. Bleiler (1978), p. 213. Reginald 15670. A fine copy in very good pictorial dust jacket (designed by Hermann Post) with light wear along top and bottom edges, mainly at head and tail of spine panel and corner tips and small internal tape mend at head of spine panel (no show through), small 12 mm closed tear at the upper front panel. A bright, attractive example of an uncommon jacket. (24975). Item #24975

Price: $750.00

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