The Crystal Button

'''Thomas, Chauncey. The Crystal Button.''' Written 1872-78. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891.

According to R. Neustadter in "Mechanization Takes Command" (cited under Literary Criticism), TCB presents a future utopia featuring "a technocratic, centralized state run," primarily by engineers, "through a meritocracy of scientific management." As in A. C. Clarke's Diaspar in The City and the Stars (q.v., this Category)—but without the ironies of Diaspar—"The pyramid cities of the future are huge technological envelopes enclosing citizens in domes of security" (26-28). See also R. Silverberg's The World Inside.

RDE, Title, 6Aug19