STELLA AND AN UNFINISHED COMMUNICATION: STUDIES OF THE UNSEEN. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co New York: Macmillan & Co, 1895. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 1-177 [178: ads], original green cloth, front panel ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, top edge untrimmed, black coated endpapers. First edition. The first appearance of two important nineteenth century science fiction stories, both collected later in Hinton's SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES, SECOND SERIES (1896). "Stella" is "the story of an invisible girl of a rather moralistic bent, who has various adventures;" "An Unfinished Communication" is "a much more baroque tale in which the fact that duration can be represented as a fourth dimension is used to support the supposition that interference from a higher space-time entered after death might allow the record of a lifetime to be productively reconstructed." - Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950, p. 137. "An Unfinished Communication" is a "remarkable posthumous fantasy in which characters seek redemption by operating in the fourth dimension (time) to amend the errors they made in life." – Barron (ed), Fantasy Literature 2-80. Hinton's work was destined to be the inspiration for other writers whose works would eclipse his own. His SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES provided ideas that may have influenced the early work of H. G. Wells and his speculations on multi-dimensionality inspired the more famous speculations of P. D. Ouspensky. See Rudy Rucker, "Life in the Fourth Dimension: C. H. Hinton and His Scientific Romances," Foundation 18 (January 1980), 12-18. Anatomy of Wonder (1981) 1-98. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1098. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 421. Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, p. 565. Suvin, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK, p. 61. Reginald 37844. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978). Binding slightly leaned, touch of wear to cloth at head and tail of spine panel, a near fine, bright copy. Quite scarce. (#8212).
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