I Read Books: We

 

We

It’s the future and the United State (singular) is in charge of everything. Our protagonist D-503 is in charge of building the world’s first spaceship, the Integral, which will be flying soon. But despite everything being ordered – the Tables tell everyone what to do, hour by hour – there’s still discontent and rebellion. I mean why else would the Bureau Of Guardians exist?

This, from the 1920s, is a prototype for later dystopias. Our hero begins as a loyal worker for the state, but is seduced by the wilderness beyond the Green Wall, the knowledge that there were other ways of living, by a non-state-sanctioned lover and also by his state-sanctioned lover that wants his child but isn’t allowed (she’s too short). As discontent spreads the Bureau Of Guardians come up with a radical surgery of the brain that makes people obedient.

Read This: For an early dystopian novel of totalitarianism
Don’t Read This: Simultaneously total and prototypical it offers no answers
Out Of Copyright: And available online in both Russian and in translation