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NEQUA
This is the book that started me
on a great adventure. I obtained it from a
collection of books that I was hired to dispose of
forty years ago. I took them home and last year I
decided to sell them.
The first problem to show up was
Nequa. Everyone said it was pretty rare but no one
knew of any copies selling so maybe people didn't
want it. I didn't want to price it to cheap. I
needed to know more about this book.
It is listed as the first
feminist science fiction novel. It was published by
Equity Publishing in Topeka Kansas in
1900.
So I set off to find out what
the deal was.
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Nequal or The Problem of
the Ages by Jack Adams was a romance and a science
fiction story of a trip to the north pole and then
into the center of the earth. Yea that is a formula
that has been used by several writers. But with
this book the authors were actually using that idea
to introduce and present a look at another way for
people to live. Women were equal, in fact Jack
Adams reveals himself as actually being, a herself
disguised as a man. The book sold well and was
compared to Bellamys "Looking Backward" and Jules
Verne's "Journey to the Center of the
Earth".
As the Dedication says, "To all lovers of
humanity, wherever found who believe that the
application of the Golden Rule in human affairs
would remove all the burdens that ignorance and
greed have imposed upon the masses of mankind, this
volume is respectfully dedicated by The
Author."
Copyrighted 1900, by A. O. Grigsby and Mary P.
Lowe
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It came from the collection
of George William Kleieghe a profesor at Bethany
College in Lindsborg Kansas. He was about twenty
when the book was published. The first year that I
was at Bethany college he was still a dorm parent
at Kalmar Hall. I could have asked him about the
people envolved in the publishing of the book. The
more research I did the less I really knew. Kleighe
would have known them rather well as he was part of
the Populist/Socialist political establishment in
Kansas and later ran for Governor of Kansas on the
Socialist ticket. I could have had the whole story
about the development of this book.
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The undersigned claims no
credit for the concept of an "Inner World" in which
the great economic problems which now confront the
peoplehad been solved in the interest of humanity
and ideal conditions established for all. This was
the leading thought in a work by Dr. T. A. H. Lowe,
deceased, which was placed in the hands of the
writer by his widow, Mrs. Mary P. Lowe. It contains
a glowing description of the ideal conditions which
would provail under the practical application of
the principals of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity
in human affairs but the author died before he had
an opportunity to work out a practical system by
which the masses of the people, situated as they
now are, without even a clear understanding as to
just what is the matter, could commence with
existing conditions, and peacefully, effectually
and speedily establish the much desired system of
absolute justice in distribution which he
described. Hence it was determined to prepare a
series of volumes, illustrating the operation of
practica working methods by which this result could
be secured, and then, publish Dr. Lowe's original
volume, just as it was written as a fitting
conclusion; and we now take pleasure in presenting
to the reader the first volume of the series and
respectfully ask a candid consideration of the
principals which it is designed to elucidate Jack
Adams
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