The Heads of Cerberus

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A rediscovered classic of science fiction, set in a dystopian twenty-second-century society where the winner takes all, written by the genre's first major female writer and predating The Hunger Games by nearly a century. Philadelphia, 1918- Three friends-brave, confident Viola Trenmore, clever but shy Robert Drayton, and Viola's strong and hot-tempered brother, Terry-discover a mysterious powder that transports them two hundred years into the future. The Philadelphia of 2118 is no longer a bustling metropolis but instead a completely isolated city recovering from an unknown disaster. Citizens are issued identification tags instead of having names, and society is split between a wealthy, powerful minority and a downtrodden lower class. The position of supreme authority is held by a woman, and once a year she oversees competitions to the death to determine who rules alongside her. When Viola, Terry, and Robert are forced to take part in these strange and deadly games, it will take their combined wits for them to escape this strange world and return home. Equal parts dystopia and adventure, The Heads of Cerberus is an unjustly forgotten work of early science fiction, written by a trailblazing master of the genre. The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.

Reviews

An early-twentieth-century time-travel dystopia whose vision of 2118 resonates eerily with our own century . . . a fast-paced, imaginative yarn.Kirkus Reviews

Author Bio

Francis Stevens was the pseudonym for Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1884-1948), the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States. Bennett completed school through the eighth grade then attended night school in hopes of becoming an illustrator. In 1900, she wrote her first story, "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar," which she submitted, on a whim, to the preeminent pulp magazine Argosy. To her surprise, it was accepted and published in March 1904, under her own name. Stevens began writing under the pseudonym Gertrude Barrows Bennett in 1917, after her husband died during a treasure-hunting expedition. From 1917 to 1923, she published short stories and novellas, and then abruptly stopped. It is believed that she died in 1948.