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Looking Backward: 2000-1887
by Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) surely bears great responsibility for the reputation utopias have for being didactic. Even those with a high tolerance for idea-driven fiction and the trope of a stranger being shown about a strange land may find this book too light on storytelling. In Bellamy's work, the protagonist arrives 100 years in the future and much of the utopian setting he arrives at is explained to him as he recovers from his shock. He does some exploration later, visiting a shop and a common dining hall, but a great deal is told to him by a single other character as he stays at home. The book includes a long sermon (literally the protagonist listens to a sermon piped into the room he sits in). It's a passive, inactive explanation of a utopian society.
That said, there are interesting ideas in this book about how to consider and organize society — many of these are common across utopian literature. It seems that while there is some general agreement about the kinds of things that would improve society, there are very few thoughts about the best way to arrive — other than by accidental transport to a secluded society in an isolated location.
Read this for: anyone interested in utopias, utopian-thinking, societal change
Pairs well with: Aldous Huxley's Island, Samuel Butler's Erewhon, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (the shared phrase and discussion of "industrial armies"). Also, on an unrelated note, to An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke (Bellamy is a New England writer)
Quotes:"But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow human beings from whom fortune only distinguished them?"
"'In my day,' I replied, 'it was considered that the proper functions of government, strictly speaking, were limited to keeping the peace and defending the people against the public enemy, that is to the military and police powers.' 'And, in heavens name, who are the public enemies?' exclaimed Dr. Leete. 'Are they France, England, Germany or hunger, cold, and nakedness?'"
"...but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the workers as in your day they did the soldier."
"The failure of my age in any systemic or effective way to develop and utilize the natural aptitudes of man for the industries and intellectual avocations was one of the great wastes, as well as one of the most common causes of unhappiness in that time."
"Equal education and opportunity must needs bring to light whatever aptitudes a man has, and neither social prejudice nor mercenary considerations hamper him in the choice of his life work."
That said, there are interesting ideas in this book about how to consider and organize society — many of these are common across utopian literature. It seems that while there is some general agreement about the kinds of things that would improve society, there are very few thoughts about the best way to arrive — other than by accidental transport to a secluded society in an isolated location.
Read this for: anyone interested in utopias, utopian-thinking, societal change
Pairs well with: Aldous Huxley's Island, Samuel Butler's Erewhon, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (the shared phrase and discussion of "industrial armies"). Also, on an unrelated note, to An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke (Bellamy is a New England writer)
Quotes:"But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow human beings from whom fortune only distinguished them?"
"'In my day,' I replied, 'it was considered that the proper functions of government, strictly speaking, were limited to keeping the peace and defending the people against the public enemy, that is to the military and police powers.' 'And, in heavens name, who are the public enemies?' exclaimed Dr. Leete. 'Are they France, England, Germany or hunger, cold, and nakedness?'"
"...but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the workers as in your day they did the soldier."
"The failure of my age in any systemic or effective way to develop and utilize the natural aptitudes of man for the industries and intellectual avocations was one of the great wastes, as well as one of the most common causes of unhappiness in that time."
"Equal education and opportunity must needs bring to light whatever aptitudes a man has, and neither social prejudice nor mercenary considerations hamper him in the choice of his life work."