For modern audiences, I would recommend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(novel) over the film adap

For modern audiences, I would recommend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(novel) over the film adaption. The film is amazing for it’s time. But, is... difficult to appreciate today. The book however, has some of the most intense imagery I’ve ever read. I had to put it down between pages to give my mind a bit of time to process each scene. An important bit of context for the book is that it was written by a woman who moved from an agrarian village in Germany —where nothing had changed for hundreds of years— to height-of-the-Industrial-Revolution New York. It was quite a shock. And, imagine the book is from her extrapolations. A fun bit is that it was written long before the invention of computers. So, this vision of a technologically advanced society has no concept of computerization and substitutes mind-numbing, body-crushing proletariat labor as the means of automation.