Search Worlds Without End

Contents:

• v - Introduction (The World Below) - essay by Everett F. Bleiler
• 1 - The Amphibians - [Amphibians - 1] - (1925) - novel by S. Fowler Wright
• 204 - The World Below - [Amphibians - 2] - (1929) - novel by S. Fowler Wright

The World Below is about an adventurer who travels 500,000 years into the future with the aid of a time machine. There he encounters a race of intelligent furry beings, the Amphibians. With their help he explores the planet and is eventually captured by the Dwellers, super-intelligent beings who direct the destinies of the planet.

Publication can be confusing as both the first and second installment have been published as The World Below. They are typically paired as The Amphibians (part 1) and The World Below (part 2), or as The World Below (part 1) and The Dwellers (part 2).

S. Fowler Wright's novel, The World Below, one of the classics of British scientific romance, was hailed as a masterpiece of science fiction when it was published in the U.S. Originally intended as a trilogy, the novel was cut short when Wright's business went bankrupt. Now Brian Stableford, with the permission of the author's estate, has penned the sequel that the master never had the chance to finish.

A Million years hence, life on Earth has undergone a radical transformation that has brough it under threat from extraterresteral trials. To settle its difficulties, a time-traveler from the twentieth century must attempt a further odyssey into the remote future time, which only he is qualified to undertake. But will he be able to bring back any intelligence from his voyage, if he manages to return at all-or will the possiblity that he might change history doom his quest from the outset?

Like it's predecessor, The World Beyond attemps to enxtend the literary imagination as far as it can be taken, in the context of our present scientific understanding of evolutionary processes. This is a first-rate adventure based on a work of creative genius.