The Scarlet Empire

Author : David Parry
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781975976118
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (761 download)

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Download or read book The Scarlet Empire written by David Parry and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr. Parry's book is the story of a young man who, having become impoverished by too close attention to socialist propaganda, attempts suicide by jumping off the long pier at Coney Island. He awakes to find himself in the mythical Atlantis. a land where pure social democracy rules. Absolute equality he finds to be the law among its inhabitants. No man, for example, can talk more than another, so-verbo-meters measuring the number of words are attached to each, and a thousand words is the day's allotment. No man shall have more to eat than another, else he would receive greater than his share from the common supply. No distinction is made between the sexes. An obvious play to feminine prejudice, almost worthy of Thomas Dixon and "The One Woman," is made when it is shown that all those possessing womanly grace and beauty are accounted "atavars" in Atlantis, imprisoned as a degenerate type, and if found "incurable" thrown to a sea monster. All men are debased to a dead level of stagnation instead of all being raised to the height of goodness and happiness. Work is a task to which men have to be driven by overseers; one-fourth of the total population is set to watch the other three-fourths. The unnamed hero of the book is taken under the tutelage of a doctor who turns out to be secretly an "atavar" and a hater of the system. It is not long before the new Atlantide is also rid of the last vestige of his socialist ideas, and together he and the doctor plot the fall of Atlantis. Meanwhile the hero meets a lovely "atavar," whom he calls Astr�a, .and straightway falls in love with her. He is sent to the Atlantian legislature, where he attains fame by introducing several equality bills, such as that food shall be chewed an equal number of times on both sides of the mouth and that no one shall take steps of more than ten inches. All the time he is planning his escape from the land where the state is supreme and does all of a man's thinking for him. The last straw is when Astr�a is to be given in marriage to a hideous dwarf who is the real "boss" of the democracy, and he to a toothless hag also of the "inner circle." He is discovered with Astraea and both are condemned to die. His and the doctor's preparations have ripened none too soon. They have discovered a sunken submarine which, under pretext of destroying the treasure of the ancients which he has maintained in the legislature constitutes a menace to the state as long as it lies in the Atlantian museum, he has loaded with jewels and gold. They have also mined the great central monument of Atlantis. erected to the Federation of Labor, which initiated social democracy. At the moment when he and Astr�a are to be thrown to the monster, the hero shoots with a pistol right and left among the astounded Atlantides. who have lost the art of firearms, the doctor blows up the monument and. after an exciting race for the submarine, the little party of "atavars" escapes. Their parting shot is a torpedo hurled at the sea monster, which shatters the wall protecting Atlantis from the sea and the social democracy is engulfed. Back in the land of individualism they "live happily forever after."... --Public Opinion, Vol. 40.