Some Day?

ULTIMO--John & Ruth Vassos--Dutton ($5).*

Will glaciers once again, as in prehistoric times, creep slowly down from the poles, herding all animal life into the equatorial belt, gradually covering the whole world? John and Ruth Vassos, historically imaginative, in Ultimo give a picture of what may happen when the ice has driven man off the face of the earth.

Ultimo is an imaginary record, written by a man of those far-future times, of what life was like to subterranean man. For as the ice spread and the earth grew colder, civilization either died or dug. First it "established itself around the equator, a civilization of peoples with one dominating idea--to continue to exist. Great circular cities were built consisting of low buildings which hugged the ground . . . cities like gigantic mushrooms, walled and roofed in materials magnifying the little warmth that still emanated from the sun, shutting out snow and cold." Finally even these failed. "Into the frozen earth bored the huge electric drills."

On a plane of equable temperature within the earth Man re-established himself, tunneling thousands of miles, gradually building his subterranean cities. Working hours were continuous, but no one's shift was long. A rigid socialism did away with even the need of money. Industrial sections, the huge synthetic food-producing plants, were centralized, far removed from residential and play centres. Travel was practically instantaneous: in cars "magnetically levitated through vacuum tunnels." No animal food was eaten. The life span was prolonged to the limits of usefulness--then the worn-out person was "removed." Population was static, births controlled, hygiene enforced. Still men were not happy. They dreamed of an almost forgotten time when their ancestors roamed the earth's surface; their thoughts turned to other possibly habitable planets. Expedition after expedition, in projectile-like cars rocketed out through sidereal space, never to be heard of again, but still there were volunteers.

Ruth Vassos has written the book; her husband John has illustrated it with wash drawings whose futuristic potency well entitle them to be called "projections."

*Published Oct. 28.

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