Note: When Thea von Harbou became Fritz Lang's second wife in 1922, she'd already established herself as an important author and screenwriter. The idea for Metropolis emerged from a novella she'd written a few years previously. The finished novel of Metropolis was written while she (with assistance from Lang) worked on the screenplay. Thus the first 1926 edition of the book (274 pp.) should be viewed as a novel in its own right, while the second 1926 edition of the book is a more direct movie tie-in (194 pp.).