World Without Men

2012 Reprint of 1958 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The blurb on the thirty-five cent Ace paperback likens Charles Eric Maines 1958 novel World Without Men to George Orwells 1984 and Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. Ordinarily one would regard such a comparison skeptically. Nevertheless while not rising to the artistic level of the Orwell and Huxley masterpieces World Without Men merits being rescued from the large catalogue of 1950s paperback throwaways. Maines bases his vision of an ideological dystopia not on criticism of socialism or communism per se nor of technocracy per se but rather of feminism. Maine saw in the nascent feminism of his day (the immediate postwar period) a dehumanizing and destructive force tending towards totalitarianism which had the potential to deform society in radical unnatural ways. Maine believed that feminism as he understood it derived its fundamental premises from hatred of not respect for the natural order. He also believed that feminism entailed a rebellion against sexual dimorphism.