Metropolis

By: Thea Von Harbou

Narrated by: Rupert Degas

This book is not of today 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.—Thea von Harbou, in the novel's original epigraph

Originally published in German in 1925, this expressionist epic tells a story about class difference and love in a city that boasts technological growth at the expense of exploited laborers, contending with the relationship between advances in technology and social progress. Written in tandem with the 1927 science-fiction film of the same name, which was directed by Thea von Harbou's husband Fritz Lang, the story, through both the novel and the film, has inspired and influenced countless works of art, creating a legacy that extends across the science-fiction genre and beyond it.

Public Domain (P)2023 Dreamscape Media

An imperfect classic

The concepts and ideas (the monolith city, the human God like figure, the mad scientist have been used again and again making this an important work.

But the dialogue is brutal and much of it is overwritten.

Robot Face on Cover Not Feminine Enough

If you like Metropolis, this audiobook will dazzle you. Its only flaw for me is that the face of the Hel robot on the cover looks more like that of a black man than a white woman.