Rose Macaulay 3 hr 23 min read

In a near-future Britain, a Ministry of Brains sets out to breed intelligence into the populace by regulating who may marry and reproduce, until love and human nature rebel against the scheme.

Rose Macaulay's 1918 novel is a witty, prophetic dystopian satire. Sharp, funny, ahead of its time. Read it for a brilliant early dystopia, a mordant comedy of state-engineered eugenics and bureaucratic overreach that predates and may have influenced Brave New World, from a major British novelist skewering the managerial impulse with elegant, biting wit.

In its time

Published in 1918, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

3 hr 23 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).