NEQUA OR THE PROBLEM OF THE AGES

Kansas City: Green Snake Press, 2014. Third edition. Paperback in new condition.. New Introduction and Background Material by Mark O.J. Esping; xiv, 349 pages. A feminist, science fiction, hollow earth, utopian novel. An early entry in all these genre. Originally published in Topeka Kansas in 1900. Jack Adams the author, is a woman masquerading as a man. She is searching for her betrothed Captain Ganoa. She ends up working for him as Jack Adams on a trip to the arctic regions where the ship is first caught in the ice and then sails into the seas on the inside of the earth, where the Altrurian civilization exists. The Altrurians explain how they evolved as a co-operative society. Eventually "Jack Adams" flys one of the aeroplanes with a copy of the manuscript titled NEQUA back to the outside world. In "Science Fiction: The Early Years" authors Everett F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler said that "........parallels American history in a broad sense, but a great change came during a moral revolution in which selfishness was abandoned." Carol A. Kolmerten, Prof. of English at Hood College stated that "A few of the male writers also questioned their culture's prevailing gender ideology in the pages of the Utopian Novels. The most obvious example is Alcanoan O. Grigsby, whose 1900 novel NEQUA, describes a world where both sexes are equal after women put an end to war and demanded freedom from domination of man-made laws." Michelle K. Yost on her blog wrote "Though fairly typical of other terra cava narratives concerned with exploration, spiritualism, and utopianism, there are a few unique features, not the least of which is a female narrator." This third edition contains forty additional pages which provide information and background on the authors and their friends with a few hints on why the book was written.