Brave New World (1932)

Control arrives through conditioning, consumption and reliably available pleasure, rather than through punishment alone. Huxley's World State makes a useful companion to satires of overt repression because its citizens are trained to desire the system that sorts them. The 1932 setting matters to its anxieties about mass production and eugenics. Its treatment of race, disability and the supposedly 'savage' also calls for scrutiny, not automatic acceptance as enlightened criticism.