With the spectres of Communism, National Socialism (fascism), and the New Deal society, her work was perfectly tailored in reason for the 20th century.
Unfortunately, her major novels were works of fiction, and must be dismissed as such, along with 1984, Brave New World, and every other melodrama that's based on one author's absurd fantasies of utopia and dystopia.
I think you wrong Huxley and Orwell by dismissing their works, nineteen eighty-four and Brave New World, as "...melodrama...based on one author's fantasies of utopia and dystopia." Orwell's novel, for example, maybe a number of things, but 'melodrama' isn't one of them, and the prospect of such a world as he envisioned is patently unabsurd, as anyone living in North Korea can tell you. There is no better, more insightful portrait of the totalitarian mindset to be found anywhere. His novel does what all great literature does: tells a greater truth by means of the artifice of fiction.
I can take or leave Huxley's novel, although his essays are worthwhile. Ayn Rand, on the other hand, is a hack writer and even worse philospher. Whitaker Chambers, in a 50-year-old National Review article recently republished on NR online, had her down cold.