The Sea Lady, a Tissue of Moonshine

Much attention has been paid to the “scientific romance” novels of H.G. Wells, a founder of modern science fiction and one of the genre’s greatest writers. In comparison, little attention has been given by critics to his works of fantasy, which in the opinion of many, are just as artistic and worthy of study. This work, takes a critical look at Wells’ little known fantasy The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine, which is “a parable of dark foreboding that unveils the nothingness of utopian dreams” and foreshadows Franz Kafka’s dark fables of the totalitarian age. A lengthy introduction by the editor provides a comprehensive overview of the text and the story of The Sea Lady, and serves to explain the ideas of civil death and every citizen’s acting as a public servant, and the concept of totalitarian metaphysics, which deals with a revolt against the limits of the human condition. This work provides a complete, extensively annotated text of the 1902 London first edition of The Sea Lady.

The late Leon Stover, professor emeritus at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was the first to bring science fiction to the college curriculum and was the author of numerous landmarks of intellectual history. He lived in Chicago.