The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century

Synopsis

"In the year 2126, England enjoyed peace and tranquility under the absolute dominion of a female sovereign." Not such a surprising first sentence for a science fiction novel, until you realize that Webb wrote The Mummy! in 1827. Her vision of technological progress knocks me out: everything is steam powered; women wear big hats with fantastic, lit-up neon tubes instead of ostrich feathers; weather control increases crop productivity; passengers on trans-continental aerial balloon flights sleep on comfy air mattresses. But for some wacky reason, women still can't vote! Read it for the weirdness of shocking a mummy to life with a large galvanic battery, and try not to expect much from the plot, which is slow and romance-novelly. (Liz Henry - ehenry@vertex.ucls.uchicago.edu)