Brave New World (1932)

The dystopia that controls people through pleasure rather than pain. Huxley's World State breeds citizens to order, conditions them to love their station and keeps them content with a feel-good drug and easy distraction, so there is no need for a secret police. It is the natural partner to Nineteen Eighty-Four, and book clubs still split over which prophecy fits the present better. Critics of consumer culture and critics of social engineering both find their argument here, which is a large part of why it lasts. The satire is funny as well as chilling, and the final third turns into a genuine debate about whether freedom is worth unhappiness.