Like John Wyndham, Cooper often deals with the breakdown of society or its aftermath. Examples are The Last Continent, in which black martian colonists return to an earth inhabited by white savages, the survivors of a race war; and The Cloud Walker, which tells of the redevelopment of flight in a luddite society formed after two nuclear holocausts. In his best novel, The Overman Culture, a boy growing up starts to realise that his world was constructed to temper him and a few fellows. His sexism, as most manifest in Who Needs Men?, is probably the strongest criticism of his work which is otherwise entertaining and thought-provoking.
M.H. Zool