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Informationen zum Autor Rose Macaulay; introduction by Matthew De Abaitua Klappentext "A government ministry decides to increase national brain-power, and stave off the coming idiocracy, through a program of compulsory selective breeding. The propaganda efforts in support of this endeavor are amazing. The book ends on an ambiguous note: Is the victory of "human perverseness, human stupidity, human self-will" over autocratic bureaucracy a triumph? Or not? Macaulay - a beloved British writer best known for The Towers of Trebizond - worked in the British Propaganda Dept. during WWI. When British censors discovered that What Not ridiculed wartime bureaucracy, its 1918 publication was stopped. An influence on Huxley's "Brave New World.""-- Zusammenfassung An early novel by Rose Macaulay about a government program of compulsory selective breeding in a dystopian future England. In a near-future England, a new government entity—the Ministry of Brains—attempts to stave off idiocracy through a program of compulsory selective breeding. Kitty Grammont, who shares author Rose Macaulay’s own ambivalent attitude, gets involved in the Ministry’s propaganda efforts, which the novel details with an entertaining thoroughness. (The alphabetical caste system dreamed up by Macaulay for her nightmare world would directly influence Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopia Brave New World .) But when Kitty falls in love with the Minister for Brains, a man whose genetic shortcomings make a union with her impossible, their illicit affair threatens to topple the government. Because it ridiculed wartime bureaucracy, the planned 1918 publication of What Not was delayed until after the end of World War I. Inhaltsverzeichnis Series Foreword xi Introduction: Sordid Novels and Preposterous Masculine Fictions xvii Matthew De Abaitua Note xxix Apology xxxi I. The Ministry 1 II. Little Chantreys 23 III. Brains Sunday 45 IV. Our Week 59 V. The Explanation Campaign 77 VI. The Simple Human Emotions 99 VII. The Breaking Point 119 VIII. On Fixed Hearts and Changing Scenes 139 IX. The Common Herd 157 X. A Ministry at Bay 175 XI. The Storming of the Hotel 193 XII. Debris 201...
