In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a 1970s dystopian novel in which sex has become the new religion
The population of the world has reached 8 billion. Overpopulation and Malthusian fears that the world’s natural resources will run out are very real. Parents are limited to having two children; if a woman falls pregnant with a third, she must have it aborted, and to fail to do so is a crime. The word ‘triplet’ is a curse word, as are ‘purity’ and ‘chastity’. Love is little more than Freudian ‘sublimation’ of sex: an unwholesome and undesirable state. ‘Eros’, too, is a curse word, replacing ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘God’.