DIE BEFREIUNG. EIN ZUKUNFTSROMAN. Berlin: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1910. Octavo, two volumes in one: pp. [1-6] 1-241 [242: blank]; [1-2: title leaf for volume 2] [243] 244-475 [476: blank], rebound in three-quarter green pebbled leather and decorated boards, all edges stained black, marbled endpapers. First edition. Penon, a utopian nation, is created in a huge basin in the Atlantic Ocean. Its founder has discovered the original power, neutral force, which makes all things possible. Penon conquers the world and forms a world state. With limitless power over mind and matter, the Penonites employ bioengineering to redesign the planet and its inhabitants (the race problem is solved by making the Negro and Asiatic races white). An intellectual aristocracy administers the world state, but the real power is in the hands of the mind and mood-reading Kialus division which knows everyone's thoughts, desires, inclinations, and wishes. "... the ne plus ultra of technological utopias ..." - Kretzmann (1936), p. 114. Kretzmann, The Pre-War German Utopian Novel (1890-1914), pp. 114-18; p. 210. Negley, Utopian Literature 50. Bloch (2002) 262. Rebound without the publisher's advertisements (pp. 477-82), spine faded to brown, a very good copy. (#138694).
Price: $450.00
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