Meccania. The Super-State

Gregory, Owen. Meccania. The Super-State. London: Methuen, 1918.

Cited by Sargent, 1988, and B. Stableford, Romance, as a dystopian satire. See for a rationally ordered, thoroughly bureaucratized, high-tech society set ca. 1970. "Gregory" entry in S. F. Ency. compares the story with Milo Hasting's The City of Endless Night (1920).[[1]]

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In a Facebook posting of 31 May 2023, John Clute includes an image of part of the book-jacket and notes that "Significantly, the text supplied on the front cover [...] explicitly reveals the book's main target by specifically identifying Germany as Meccania, as a cancerous totalitarian hive of 'Kultur' about to subordinate humanity to the machine[2][3] (Germany is not mentioned by name in the text block)." Clute notes the 1918 date giving Owen Gregory (pseudonym?) priority over "similar post-War forebodings," including Y. Zamiatin's We.

MECCANIA | THE SUPER-STATE | BY OWEN GREGORY

A Satire on 'Kultur' in the twentieth century, Meccania is the Super-State, Germany, seen from a new angle of vision by an unprejudiced observer. Behind the ludicrous aspects of super-bureaucracy and intellectual kultur in Meccania, a sinister and unsuspected menace to all humanity is gradually revealed. Europe is threatened by an insidious process of 'meccanisation,"—the transformation of human life into a perfectly organised mechanism. Problems of vital interest to statesmen and politicians of all countries and parties are discussed in the light of the developments of the Meccanian Kultur.

METHUEN & CO. LTD. LONDON

{//'meccanisation,"—the// is correctly transcribed.}

RDE et al., initial; RDE, finishing, with thanks to John Clute, 3Jun23