
In 1932, English writer Aldous Huxley published Brave New World and foretold a future in which individualism is abhorred, the population is permanently limited and everyone is strung out on a hallucinogen known as soma. Many critics today describe this anti-utopian story as a science-fiction classic. But another 10 years or so would pass before mainstream publishers began embracing sci-fi as a genre. The years before, during and after World War …