Anyone who wants a real treat would be well-served to read that which, I think, is now in the public domain and can be read online for free.
It was written in 1907 and chronicles the history of the U.S. from 1900 to 2300 from the perspective of Ernest Everhard, a member of the outlawed U.S. Socialist Party. Though fiction it was also London's prediction of what was about to happen in the U.S. in the next hundred years. In the story the following things happen:
- a fascist-commercial alliance attempts a military coup (foreshadowing the 1933 coup attempt in the U.S.)
- the U.S. federal government gives favored status to select trade unions of their own employees while using special legislation to diminish organizing capabilities of non-government worker unions (foreshadowing the rise in political influence of SEIU and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act)
- the Democrat and Republican parties become only cosmetically different, gradually fusing in everything but name to present the outward appearance of a democracy with the efficiency of a dictatorship (foreshadowing the current status quo)
- when an organized, third party opposition of anti-government activists from both the left and right develops (represented by the U.S. Socialist Party and the National Grange) a false flag attack on the U.S. capital is used to justify emergency security legislation (foreshadowing 9/11 and the Patriot Act happening months after Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan's early successes in coordination of legal challenges to the U.S. duopoly during the '00 election)
there are those predictions of the brilliant London, too, that have yet to come to pass --



