Man's World

In a eugenics-driven future society, will one young woman’s defiance make a difference?

In the not-too-distant future, England’s population quality and quantity are under scientific control: Only those deemed the fittest are permitted to procreate. Women are groomed to be “vocational mothers”—or else sterilized and put to other uses. Written by an author married to one of the world’s most prominent eugenics advocates, this ambivalent adventure anticipates both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale. When a young woman rebels against her conditioning, can she break free?CONTENTS
Series Foreword ix
Introduction xv
Philippa Levine
Acknowledgment 1

1 The Vision of Mensch 5
2 How Humphrey Was Made 25
3 Women and Children First 45
4 From the General to the Particular 61
5 The Voyages of Christopher 71
6 A People Unbound 83
7 No New Gods for Old 103
8 Reconstruction 115
9 Catalysis 131
10 Antibodies 153
11 Usness 191
12 Unreality 223
13 Back to the Future 255"Haunting, complex, profound, and relevant, Man’s World is a compelling novel that forwards intriguing commentary on questions of gender, race, and social order."
—Foreword Reviews

"Remains deeply relevant nearly a century after it was first published."
—Reactor Magazine

“A dystopian conundrum and an alarming read. . . . A book over which Marjorie Taylor Greene and Judith Butler could break bread, and then invite the ghosts of Michel Foucault, Margaret Sanger, and Hugh Hefner for an after-dinner digestif. It’s that weird.”
—The New York Sun

“MIT Press’s splendid Radium Age imprint of science fiction spotlights yet another eerily resonant title. . . . The new foreword is essential context.”
—Zoomer Magazine“The whole of human relations are regulated by science in this book, and the process appears to be successful and quite inhuman.”
—The Spectator (1926)

“A volatile admixture of feminist revelations with racially biased eugenic theorizing, nearly a century after its first publication, Man’s World offers unique insight into its historical moment—and our own.”
—Alexandra Minna Stern, Professor of English and History, UCLA; Founder and Co-Director of the Sterilization and Social Justice LabCharlotte Haldane (1894–1969) was a journalist who advocated for divorce reform and married women’s employment . . . while also idealizing motherhood. In 1926, the year that Man’s World was published, she married the eminent biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Her 1927 book, Motherhood and Its Enemies, made a progressive argument for easier access to contraceptives for women . . . while enraging feminists by arguing that only after having borne children could a woman be regarded as “normal.” She went on to found the Science News Service, and reported on World War II from the Russian Front.

Philippa Levine is Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas, and Director of British, Irish, and Empire Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of, among other books, Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction (2017), The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset (3rd edition, 2019), and the forthcoming The Tree of Knowledge: Science, Art and the Naked Form. With Alison Bashford, she is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010).