Who was Edson McCann? Turns out he was Frederick Pohl and Lester Del Rey, writing under a pseudonym because of the science-fiction contest mentioned on the front cover. Gizmodo has the story.

But I didn't know any of that when I read the book. So how is it, on its own terms?

First let's look at the cover copy. It doesn't have any real connection with Nineteen Eighty-Four. As far as satire goes, it's fairly gentle. There are some pleasing ironies but no horror here, nothing that cuts deeply. The comparison could be argued in that the character is a reverse Winston Smith who goes from loving Big Brother to hating Big Brother. But of course that's the normal course of events in such stories.

As far as the back cover goes, there are no food pills or test-tube sex in the novel. The quality of food that people eat is mentioned several times and tracks with social class. Everybody has the same sex urges and satisfies them in the usual ways.

The first line of the book is "The Liner from Port Lyautey was comfortable and slick, but I was leaning forward in my seat as we came in over Naples".

The Big Brother of this future world is a single global insurance company that controls everyone and everything. Our hero is a devoted servant of it, despite having a blot on his record. When his wife died he lost control of himself and spoke out against the Company, something of a transgression that's left him unusually sensitive and vulnerable and unusually determined to be a model citizen.

The book starts promisingly, with the introduction of a nemesis of the Company, Zorchi, a man who can regrow his limbs and as a result collects policy after policy for dismemberment. When we first see him he's throwing himself under a train, despite the station's being filled with Company operatives determined to stop him. He loses his legs, again, and collects another payout from the Company.

This is satisfyingly bizarre and intriguing but soon enough the novel settles into a conventional storyline with opposing forces of "good" and "bad" and the standard love interest, betrayals, vengeances, etc.

In its last line it concludes with a final irony, a nod to how power always corrupts. By the time you get there, you'll have had more than enough of contrivances and convenient good luck for the hero, so a dash of weary recognition that the battle will have to be fought again is a welcome balance.