General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHave just discovered "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy...
from the forward:
I found this Signet Classic edition, published in 1960..
The narrator is talking to people in the year 2000, when all inequity and economic classes have been long outgrown by an equitable utopia.. He regales them with stories of the bad old days,
This book sparked some of the biggest populist pushback against the robber barons.. and I do believe that it could use a little resurgence!
murielm99
(30,777 posts)It is somewhere in my bookshelves, battered and yellowed. I will look for it. I remember reading it when I was in my twenties, but it deserves another look. Thanks for posting this!
deadinsider
(201 posts)I had to read this for English Comp 1.
If I remember correctly this book is consider part of the so-called classic 'Utopian' trilogy which include "Utopia" by Thomas Moore; I can't remember the 3rd one.
The 'Utopian' trilogy is the literary opposite of the so-called 'Dystopian' trilogy comprised of "We", "Brave New World", and "1984".
Its been a long, long time since I read it but it essentially is considered communist, ergo why it really isn't well known any longer.
hunter
(38,337 posts)Gutenburg.org has them:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/624 Looking Backward, Edward Bellemy
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3261 News from Nowhere, William Morris
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130 Utopia, Thomas More
It's been awhile. I guess I could google 'utopian trilogy' or something.
A precursor to the 'dystopian trilogy' is London's 'the Iron Heel.' My favorite book.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)prescient as hell about the internet, UPS/FedEx and quite a few other things.
hunter
(38,337 posts)Don't know why, but I've got an utterly mad sequel brewing on my desktop as I type this.
Bellamy's utopia seems a lot more practical than Morris's News from Nowhere and is much more appealing than the techno-utopias of H.G. Wells which, with 20/20 hindsight, are highly tainted with fascism.
Bellamy's sequel Equality is a tough slog. I can't read it without picturing Bellamy at his writing desk, sentenced to death by tuberculosis, desperate to flesh out his utopia before the lights dim.