Metropolis

By Thea von Harbou
ace books A Division of Charter Communications Inc. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036
This Ace edition follows the text of the first English edition, originally published in 1927.
Title-page design by Jack Gaughan.
Printed in U.S.A.
Metropolis is a classic of science-fiction which created an impact on the literary world which reverberates to this day. Its dramatic presentation of the city-world of the next century stirred the minds of readers with an unforgettable vision of a metropolis grown to Gargantuan proportions, of humanity fighting to keep its soul against the monster world of machinery, robots, and complexity that had been spawned in our own century. The book inspired a movie which is possibly the best science-fiction film ever made.
This book is not of to-day or of the future.
It tells of no place.
It serves no cause, party or class.
It has a moral which grows on the pillar of understanding: “The mediator between brain and muscle must be the Heart.”
—T. vH.
Now the rumbling of the great organ swelled to a roar, pressing, like a rising giant, against the vaulted ceiling, to burst through it.