Thea von Harbou ~5 hr read

In the towering city-world of 2026, the pampered son of the master glimpses the machine-slaves toiling far below, and a prophetess named Maria who dreams of a mediator between the hands and the head.

Thea von Harbou's 1925 novel, basis for the legendary Fritz Lang film, is a visionary dystopia of a divided future city. Ornate, mythic, hugely influential. Read it for the source of one of the greatest of all science-fiction films, a fevered vision of class, machinery, and the human soul.

In its time

Published in 1925, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

~5 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

Jack Gaughan