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3.07 AVERAGE
3.07 AVERAGE
If you love dreadful Victorian writing, and outdated visionary futures, you could do no better than this. Bellamy weaves a fantasy Boston where utterly boring men talk about the labor problem, distribution of wealth and social roles. I didn’t reach the sexy parts before I began to hit myself on the head with my 1890s edition in order to stay awake. For a more adventurous future try The Sleeper Awakes by HGWells. Seemingly derived from Bellamy, it is remarkably awful, too. Inventing a future unlike the contemporary industrial West of the time, occupied the time of some big minds, but don’t let that fool you, these novels will bore you out of yours, I predict.
Bellamy's LB is a late nineteenth century (1887) look at an imagined future. Written during the so-called Gilded Age, it posits a coming era devoid of the class conflicts and wealth disparity which divided the US at the time. It is a utopian novel and it is not literary fiction. There are clumps of dialogue which today we would call "reader feeder"---and it's in these bits and in the internals of Julian West who awakes after more than a century "asleep." Every topic of the day is treated and some of Bellamy's notions about the coming age are quite on-target. Well worth the read, despite sometimes clunky writing. The book, after all, spawned a short-lived social movement, an organization which aimed to bring about the changes Bellamy predicted.
I understand that this book has historical and literary significance, and I appreciate the way in which Bellamy both implicates his time (and, refreshingly, himself) AND sees within that time a ground for revolution. But not even my affection for 19th century sentimentality and precursors to modern genre fiction can make up for the fact that this book was moralizing and monotonous. Not to mention that a society organized as an army, in which small groups of "fit" individuals make decisions for everyone else and cultural normalization is the basis for social stability, is not my idea of a utopia. Side note: it's called fascism.
A bit of a bait and switch for me. Referred in another work as one of the first time-travel science fiction novels, it really was, instead, a treatise on the merits of socialism and the perils of capitalism. I already sort of agreed with the premises so it was preaching to the choir and it was a lot of preaching. Written in the late 19th century, the protagonist travels to the 20th century to find the world is a lot more egalitarian. I was looking forward to the time travel aspect and actually think the very idea of speculative fiction from that time period, like that done by H.G. Wells, is interesting to compare to actually reality. This books glosses over the mechanism of said time travel, and is really an essay on socialism disguised as a thinly veiled science fiction-ish allegory.
I'm even more of a socialist now after reading this book. One thing that's very dated and almost made me put it down is its view on women, but that can be perhaps explained by when it was written. Feminism has fortunately progressed quite a lot more than politics or equality in the hundred years since.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
i love a good futuristic dystopia story. key word being good, i suppose. this one was rather forgettable.
As a philosophy it's interesting, but I only got about half way through before losing interest completely.
One star for a piece of literature. Two-and-a-quarter if you consider the essence some of the long-winded political points Bellamy makes. Basically he outlines the benefits of a planned-and-constantly-adjusted economy, dressing them up in military uniform to appeal to Americans and adds the - hopelessly optimistic - twist that no world revolution was needed. Apparently everybody just agrees that this is the best way.
Some of the scenes set in the 19th century have a little literary merit, but everything else is in the lowest two percentiles of books I've read. There are boring textbooks on the minutiae of voting systems that are more fun to read. It's just one guy talking and one agreeing that his objections were obviously not weighty enough.
On the plus side, women work too and Bellamy pretty much predicted Amazon (without the web-based parts).
Some of the scenes set in the 19th century have a little literary merit, but everything else is in the lowest two percentiles of books I've read. There are boring textbooks on the minutiae of voting systems that are more fun to read. It's just one guy talking and one agreeing that his objections were obviously not weighty enough.
On the plus side, women work too and Bellamy pretty much predicted Amazon (without the web-based parts).
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
One has to suspend their disbelief when reading this book and treat it more as a primary source from the Gilded Age in American history. Bellamy wrote this novel as a critique of the latter half of the 19th century and imagines a better world set in the year 2000. Most of the novel is dialogue driven, most pages filled with conversation between Dr. Leete and Julian West. West’s lack of breakdown from losing his past life, loved ones, etc. can be explained by tremendous shock, but it’s kind of funny to think that if this was a modern story that great detail would be given to his emotional state. Again, much of the pacing, characters, and dialogue can be excused if the book is understood through the context of Bellamy writing a thought experiment/critique first and a traditional novel second.