I also came across Upton Sinclair's Millennium which I had not even heard of before. It is pertinent and amusing. Set in 2000 but conceived in 1907, it posits a Pleasure Palace in Central Park, 100 plus stories high, with of course, an opulent Ball Room. There is a senescent plus size President- out of condition - who is very rich and surrounded by a selfish crowd of manipulative Oligarchs.
A radioactive device, functionally a neutron bomb, leaves the buildings intact but kills all the people but except a clutch of rich parasites who survive because they have access to a high tech aircraft that rises above the lethality. This which leads to an interesting sociopolitical experiment, the Cooperative Commonwealth! Incidental to the story, tech innovation, as well as the bomb, includes wireless phones, massive aircraft, dietary supplements, ultra processed food, and similar uncannily foresightful predictions! It has shades of G B Shaw and of the Admirable Crichton (by J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame) while the butler foreshadows Jeeves.
Beginning as a stage play that was unstaged, it became a novel. It is worth reading just for its uncanny quasi-synchronicity but also offers parable-like expositions of capitalist economics and politics anticipating the "Great Money Trick" in the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It has so many literary connections, that I heartily recommend it, to tickle both the funny bones and the social conscience.
I enjoyed it!
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