PLANETENFEUER. EIN ZUKUNFTSROMAN. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger G. m. b. H., 1899. Octavo, pp. [1-5] 6-334, original brown bevel-edged cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold and black, publisher's colophon stamped in blind on rear cover, slate coated endpapers, all edges marbled. First edition. PLANETENFEUER is a somewhat decadent socialist utopia in the year 1999, featuring a seven-hour work day and liberated but lonely women. In the second part of the novel, two planets collide. Many people are killed but mankind survives the catastrophe. According to Sapra, PLANETENFEUER expresses a pessimistic mood which is rare in the Zukunftsroman of the time (Lexicon, pp. 112-3). PLANETENFEUER is one of the five novels analyzed in depth in William S. Lewis, Catastrophist/Eschatological Motifs in German Speculative Fiction, 1895-1925. Kretzmann, The Pre-War German Utopian Novel (1890-1914), Ph.D. diss., Brown University, May, 1936, p. 212. Bloch (2002) 1404. Nagl, p. 247. Early owner's signature on verso of front free endpaper, light rubbing to cloth at spine ends and corner tips, a bright, nearly fine copy of a scarce book. (#136803).
Price: $2,500.00
No statement of printing.