NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages is one of the first feminist science fiction books published in the United States. [1] It was first serialized in the newspaper Equity. Two editions were published in Topeka, Kansas in 1900. The title page lists Jack Adams [2] as the author. Jack Adams is a pseudonym.
In the body of the work it is revealed that Jack Adams is actually a woman (Cassie) dressing in men’s clothing, who has spent several years searching for her betrothed on various ocean voyages. She is so successful in her masquerade as a male that she actually works for the ship captains. The voyage described in Nequa is to the Arctic, where the ship becomes trapped in the ice. After several harrowing adventures the ship is freed and then proceeds to sail north. The Captain of the ship, Rafael Ganoa (Cassie’s betrothed) is amazed to find that when they reach a certain spot, which should be close to the north pole, the compasses show that the ship is suddenly traveling south.
Actually they have sailed into the inside of the earth, where they meet the Altrurians, a society which has developed into a more cooperative society than those on the outside of the earth. Individual members of the Altrurian Society describe how the evolution of Altrurian society took place. These explanations reflect Populist thought of the time with definite feminist proclivities, providing the tone of a political novel.
Jack Adams exposes his/her secret and is chastised by her betrothed Captain Ganoe as having broken several conventions that exist among the outer earth society. Jack Adams/Cassie Van Ness, now called Nequa (the teacher), takes a manuscript that she has written about this voyage and leaves in one of the new aeroplanes for the outside world to have the manuscript you have been reading published.
Compilations which have included information about Nequa have resulted in misunderstandings about the authorship of the book. The article "New World That Eve Made: Feminist Utopias Written by Nineteenth-Century Women" authored by Barbara Quissell, which appeared in Kenneth Roemers’ America as Utopia, [3] discusses A. O. Grigsby as a woman writer.
In Science-Fiction, the early years: A full description of more than 3000 stories, [4] Everett Franklin Bleiler gives a synopsis and lists the authors as Alcanoan O. Grigsby, a male, and Mary P. Lowe, a female.
A. O. Grigsby (Alconoan O. Grigsby) was a Populist and later a Socialist who was editor of several newspapers from the 1890s through 1900. Mary P. Lowe was an editor of The New Woman, [5] a women’s suffrage paper, and co-editor with A. O. Grigsby of "Equity", a Populist newspaper, complete editions of which are available on microfilm from the Kansas State Historical Society.
The first edition of NEQUA listed A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe as the copyright holders. There was also an explanation printed in the first edition which credits Dr. T. A. H. Lowe with the original ideas found in NEQUA.
Dr. T. A. H. Lowe studied Eclectic Medicine at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati. [6] NEQUA contains many ideas which are similar to other hollow earth books, particularly one titled Mizora . Mizora first appeared in serialized form in the Cincinnati Commercial, a newspaper, while Dr. Lowe was enrolled at the Eclectic Medical Institute. Two other Eclectic Physicians also wrote subterranean fiction.
John Uri Lloyd was a teacher in the Pharmacy Department at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati. He wrote Etidorhpa , which had elements of secret Masonic rituals and alchemy woven throughout the book. Cyrus Teed was also an Eclectic Institute physician who preached the existence of a world inside of the earth. He became leader of Koreshanity, which built a commune in Florida.
According to Worldcat, [7] NEQUA in printed form is only owned by eleven libraries. Out of print for 115 years, interest in its political, social [8] and economic systems has reappeared on the [9] internet. A third edition, [10] published in 2015 by Green Snake Press, includes a new introduction and an epilogue, consisting of background material about the persons originally involved in the writing and publishing of NEQUA. The original copyright was held by newspaper editors and publishers who were political organizers using the printed word to further their political cause. NEQUA was published online [11] in 2017.
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
The Dispossessed is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, one of her seven Hainish Cycle novels. It is one of a small number of books to win all three Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, utopia, individualism, and collectivism.
Ralph 124C 41 +, by Hugo Gernsback, is an early science fiction novel, written as a twelve-part serial in Modern Electrics magazine, which Gernsback edited, beginning in April 1911. It was compiled into novel/book form in 1925. While it pioneered many ideas found in later science fiction, it has been critically panned for its "inept writing." The title contains a gramogram, meaning "One to foresee for one another." In the introduction to the first volume of Science-Fiction Plus, dated March 1953, Gernsback called for patent reform to give science fiction authors the right to create patents for ideas without having patent models because many of their ideas predated the technical progress needed to develop specifications for their ideas. The introduction referenced the numerous prescient technologies described throughout Ralph 124C 41+.
Wonder Stories was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, when his media company Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt. Within a few months of the bankruptcy, Gernsback launched three new magazines: Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly.
Subterranean fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction, science fiction, or fantasy which focuses on fictional underground settings, sometimes at the center of the Earth or otherwise deep below the surface. The genre is based on, and has in turn influenced, the Hollow Earth theory. The earliest works in the genre were Enlightenment-era philosophical or allegorical works, in which the underground setting was often largely incidental. In the late 19th century, however, more pseudoscientific or proto-science-fictional motifs gained prevalence. Common themes have included a depiction of the underground world as more primitive than the surface, either culturally, technologically or biologically, or in some combination thereof. The former cases usually see the setting used as a venue for sword-and-sorcery fiction, while the latter often features cryptids or creatures extinct on the surface, such as dinosaurs or archaic humans. A less frequent theme has the underground world much more technologically advanced than the surface one, typically either as the refugium of a lost civilization, or as a secret base for space aliens.
Mizora is a feminist science fiction utopian novel by Mary E. Bradley Lane, first published in 1880–81, when it was serialized in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper. It appeared in book form in 1890. Mizora is "the first portrait of an all-female, self-sufficient society," and "the first feminist technological Utopia."
John Uri Lloyd was an American pharmacist and leader of the eclectic medicine movement who was influential in the development of pharmacognosy, ethnobotany, economic botany, and herbalism.
Triplanetary is a science fiction novel and space opera by American writer E. E. Smith. It was first serialized in the magazine Amazing Stories in 1934. After the original four novels of the Lensman series were published, Smith expanded and reworked Triplanetary into the first of two prequels for the series. The fix-up novel Triplanetary was published in book form in 1948 by Fantasy Press. The second prequel, First Lensman, was a new original novel published in 1950 by Fantasy Press.
After 12,000 Years is a science fiction magazine serial and novel by American writer Stanton A. Coblentz. Considered one of the author's most bizarre and most interesting futuristic fantasies, the story originally appeared as a novella in the Spring 1929 issue of the magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly. It was later expanded and serialized for the pulp magazine Uncanny Tales in 1942, before being published in book form in 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. (FPCI). Lloyd Arthur Eshbach regarded this as one of the stronger titles published by FPCI. The story was abridged for the FPCI publication, in an edition of 1,000 copies, of which 750 were hardback. E. F. Bleiler considered the unabridged version to be superior.
Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance is a feminist science fiction and utopian novel published in 1893. The first edition of the book attributed authorship to "Two Women of the West". They were Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Robinson Merchant, writers who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Arqtiq: A Story of the Marvels at the North Pole is a feminist utopian adventure novel, published in 1899 by its author, Anna Adolph. The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian fiction that marked the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Milltillionaire, or Age of Bardization is a work of utopian fiction written by Albert Waldo Howard, and published under the pseudonym "M. Auberré Hovorré." The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century.
A Prophetic Romance: Mars to Earth is an 1896 utopian novel written by John McCoy and published pseudonymously as the work of "The Lord Commissioner," the narrator of the tale. The book is one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Angel Island is a science fiction/fantasy novel by American feminist author, journalist and suffragette Inez Haynes Irwin, writing under the name Inez Haynes Gillmore. It was originally published by Henry Holt in January 1914. The novel is about a group of men shipwrecked on an island occupied by winged-women.
Otfrid von Hanstein (1869–1959) was a German actor and writer. As a novelist, he was prolific in various genres; his best-known works in English-language translation are science fiction novels published in various magazines by Hugo Gernsback. John Clute describes von Hanstein's science fiction as "technophilic and space-oriented, crude but competent". E. F. Bleiler reports that his SF novels were suppressed by the Nazi government.
Amazing Stories Quarterly was a U.S. science fiction pulp magazine that was published between 1928 and 1934. It was launched by Hugo Gernsback as a companion to his Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, which had begun publishing in April 1926. Amazing Stories had been successful enough for Gernsback to try a single issue of an Amazing Stories Annual in 1927, which had sold well, and he decided to follow it up with a quarterly magazine. The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly was dated Winter 1928 and carried a reprint of the 1899 version of H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes. Gernsback's policy of running a novel in each issue was popular with his readership, though the choice of Wells' novel was less so. Over the next five issues, only one more reprint appeared: Gernsback's own novel Ralph 124C 41+, in the Winter 1929 issue. Gernsback went bankrupt in early 1929, and lost control of both Amazing Stories and Amazing Stories Quarterly; associate editor T. O'Conor Sloane then took over as editor. The magazine began to run into financial difficulties in 1932, and the schedule became irregular; the last issue was dated Fall 1934.
Lilith Lorraine was the pen-name of Mary Maude Dunn Wright an American pulp fiction author, poet, journalist and editor.
Mary E. Bradley Lane was an American feminist science fiction teacher and author. She was one of the first women to have published a science fiction novel in the United States.
A Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Paul Aermont among the Planets is an 1873 science fiction novel published under the pseudonym "Paul Aermont", the story's fictional main character who travels the Solar System in a balloon. After its initial publication, the book largely fell into obscurity and did not see a reprint until 2018.
Nequa or The Problem of the Ages public domain audiobook at LibriVox 
