Of the pioneering anti-Utopian novels, one of the finest and least known is City of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, first published in book form by Dodd, Mead in 1920. This unusual work, filled with uncanny prescience about impending events, was born out of the experience of World War I and the impact on Americans of imperial Germany’s statist creed, which believed in the subjugation of the individual for the sake of the nation. On all counts of inventiveness, social significance, narrative flow and intrinsic worth, it ranks with When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells, Messiah of the Cylinder by Victor Rousseau and We by Eugene Zimiatin, all written and published about the same period.
