YOUNG, Michael

(1915-)

   UK sociologist and writer whose Family and Kinship in East London (1957), with Peter Willmott, had a seminal effect on community-planning priorities. His sf work, The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870-2033: An Essay on Education and Equality (1958), not only gave theword "meritocracy" to the language but extensively defined it: a meritocracy is an elite whose members are recruited on the basis of merit (largely INTELLIGENCE) in a competitive educational system; it is also, asthe book sardonically emphasizes, a form of government. The book itself takes the form of a report written in AD2033 by an historical sociologist (its only character in any ordinary sense); and some libraries havecatalogued it as nonfiction. Though the narrator supports the system he describes, it is quite clear that MY does not; the book is a subtle and interesting DYSTOPIA. Its ending, in which the narrator is reported as killed in a populist revolt, is ironic and mutedly apocalyptic.

   PN/JC

   See also: SOCIOLOGY.