The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story (1901) is a quasi-science fiction novel on which Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad collaborated. It looks at society's mental evolution and what is gained and lost in the process. Written before the first World War, its themes of corruption and the effect of the 20th Century on British aristocracy appeared to predict history. It was first published in London by William Heinemann and later the same year in New York by McClure, Phillips & Co. In the novel, the metaphor of the "fourth dimension" is used to explain a societal shift from a generation of people...