Metropolis

Author: Thea Von Harbou

This is the novelisation of the film that Thea von Harbou wrote with her husband, Fritz Lang. It was the first feature-length science fiction film, the most expensive film made to that date, and the film alone marks this out as one of the defining science fiction texts of the years between the wars. It's a world in which the rich play high in the air in beautiful towering edifices, while the workers live a dull and constricted life largely underground, the sort of situation that recalls the Eloi and Morlocks of Wells's The Time Machine. But in this story the heir of one of the great industrialists falls in love with a teacher who works among the underclass. The teacher is leading the workers to revolution through religion, but the industrialist tries to put a stop to it by having a robot created in her image, a wild and lascivious creature that will undo all the good works of the teacher. Then the machine that keeps the city running stops, and mayhem is let loose. Why it's on the list: Without Metropolis you really can't understand the direction that science fiction was taking immediately before the Second World War. It is a powerful, vivid, wonderful piece of work, and the sexy robots of Lester Del Rey's "Helen O'Loy" or C.L. Moore's "No Woman Born" spring directly from Maria in this film.