City of Endless Night (Wiseblood Classics)

Milo Milton Hastings (1884-1957) was an American author, inventor, and cigarette-smoking nutritionist. Many believe that his most memorable novel, City of Endless Night, exercised a direct influence on Metropolis (1927), Fritz Lang's infamous science fiction film. In City of Endless Night Hasting anticipates the resurgence of Germany and its tilt toward fascism. In the words of science fiction critic Sam Moskowitz, "On all counts of inventiveness, social significance, narrative flow and intrinsic worth, [City . . . ] ranks with When the Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells, Messiah of the Cylinder by Victor Rousseau and We by Eugene Zamiatin, all written and published about the same period." The "city of night" is Berlin of the year 2041, a Berlin that has become an entirely roofed-in city of sixty levels, sheltering 300,000,000 sun-starved humans. Since 1941 the city has held its ground against the World State, which has worked to bomb it into line innumerable times. Hohenzollerns rule this world with the "graces" of autocratic socialism . . . As the 21st Century gives bountiful evidence that totalitarian dreams and impulses remain forceful, even in liberal democracies, City of Endless Night stands as an indispensable political and psychological investigation. WISEBLOOD BOOKS is dedicated to preserving, editing, and publishing fiction, philosophy, and other works fit for the world stage. We believe that many manuscripts should be published widely but remain buried in desk drawers because they cannot meet the New York publishing industry's often dubious demands. We aim to remedy that. Our WISEBLOOD CLASSICS series brings hard-to-find works back into being and introduces great books to a new generation. Visit us at www.wisebloodbooks.com. We are wide-eyed for new epiphanies of truth.