QUESTION MARK

A forgotten classic here reprinted by the British Library, the book was first published in 1926 by Leonard Woolf of the Hogarth Press and the offer letter is reproduced. Muriel Jaeger helped inaugurate the modern dystopian novel and wanted to know what had happened to real people who had solved some of the 20th century's most pressing problems such as hunger, war and the constant pressure of earning a living in a capitalist society. Add some impressive technological advances, and what new dilemmas will people encounter or create? The hero is Guy Martin who finds himself transported from his dull life as a clerk in 1920s London to a pastoral, socialist 22nd century. Preceding the publication of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World by five years, the novel has extraordinary parallels with the real world today like modern smartphones shown as a device the size of a cigarette case that has become a necessary appendage to life in the 22nd century, although meant for the generation of power. With his cockney accent, Guy doesn't really fit in socially anywhere except for the Socialist Club which he has joined. At first he is entranced by his new world and finds himself living with a doctor who has in some unexplained way brought him to this time and he is introduced to the doctor's nephew who will be his guide to the society. They spend their days on artistic and scientific pursuits and in philosophical debate with their friends, but soon Guy begins to discover that this society is just as divided. The people who either don't have the capacity or the desire for an intellectual life are called normals whose empty lives are filled with childlike emotions and pursuits. The future London is where each citizen is offered free education and a personal 'power-box' granting access to communication, transportation and entertainment. To guide the great challenges facing society seem solved, but its inhabitants tell a different story of fractured life in this supposed utopia. With far more believable characters than her contemporaries wrote there are inevitably parallels with 'The Time Machine'. 205pp, paperback.