Icarus; or the Future of Science

Icarus; or the Future of Science is a short polemical essay by Bertrand Russell, written as a deliberate counterpoint to J. B. S. Haldane's optimistic Daedalus; or, Science and the Future (1923). Where Haldane saw scientific progress as a path to human flourishing, Russell argued that science is far more likely to amplify the power of those who already hold it. Working through the physical sciences, industrialism, and what he calls the anthropological sciences, Russell sketches a future of intensified national organization, state-controlled propaganda, eugenic sterilization, and the manipulation of emotional life through hormonal injections administered by government physicians. He anticipates a world government achieved by force, despotic at first, and foresees that democratic forms will survive only as instruments of managed consent. Although not a work of fiction, Icarus maps with striking precision the mechanisms that later dystopian novelists would dramatize, and reads as a source document for much of what followed in the genre. At roughly 30 pages, it is one of the most compressed and prescient works in the dystopian tradition.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Impression. Small octavo bound maroon boards with printed paper labels on front panel and spine. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1924. #10691.
Very good copy. Slight lean and boards slightly bowed, with some wear to spine and spine label. Small previous owner's bookplate and store stamp on front pastedown. Short review clipping pasted to front free-endpaper. Somewhat scarce.