The Throne Of Saturn Wright, S[Ydney] Fowler

Octavo, cloth. First U.S. edition. 3062 copies printed. Includes the contents of THE NEW GODS LEAD (1932) plus two stories, "The Temperature of Gehenna Sue" and "Original Sin," first collected in Wright's 1945 collection, THE WITCHFINDER, and a new two-page author's foreword. "All Fowler Wright's longer scientific romances from THE AMPHIBIANS (1925) to DREAM; OR THE SIMIAN MAID (1931) deal with worlds remote from our own where, one way or another, the laws of nature (as he saw them) hold more obvious domination. His shorter stories of the same period, by contrast, follow the opposite tack -- they deal with worlds where culture has overwhelmed nature and obliterated its rule. Ten short stories are gathered together in the collection THE NEW GODS LEAD (1932), the first seven of which are grouped together as glimpses of the future where the 'new gods' of twentieth-century man will take him. The best of these stories constitute what is perhaps the most vitriolic vision of the future ever produced; they have an imaginative savagery of tone and content that is quite unparalleled. All of Fowler Wright's anxieties and preoccupations regarding the march of progress are here subjected to bitterly sarcastic extrapolation." - Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950, pp. 191-2. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-1291. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 2445. Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 86. A fine copy in fine dust jacket priced $3.00 on the front flap. (#174080)