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Hold the world's wisdom in the palm of your hand with the ISTA Flash 9.0. The most comprehensive collection of books on religion, mythology, folklore, and the esoteric ever assembled. An incredible value, with over 1700 sacred books, many of which are rare and hard to find.

Utopia and Dystopia

 


The dream of a golden age, first expressed by Hesiod, and philosophical writings such as Plato’s Republic, has become a recurring theme in literature. Many have attempted to define the ideal society. For some, the dream has turned into a nightmare, a dystopia. This page includes the best of these speculations.


 Utopia
by Sir Thomas More [1516]
Mores’ work is a fictional travelogue to a country named ‘Utopia’, which means ‘nowhere’ in Greek.

 

 The New Atlantis
by Francis Bacon [1627]
A short utopian travelogue by the inventor of the scientific method.

 The City of the Sun
by Tommaso Campanella [1637]
Along with More, Campanella wrote one of the first early modern utopias.

 

 Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery
by Adam Seaborn, (pseud. John Cleves Symmes?) [1820]
One of the rarest Hollow Earth books: a perilous sea journey to a utopian society in the inner earth, possibly the first American utopian science fiction novel.

 The Republic
tr. by Benjamin Jowett [1871]
One of the first speculations about a planned society.

 Erewhon, or Over the Range
by Samuel Butler [1872]
An influential 19th century satiric dystopia.

 The Communistic Societies of the United States
by Charles Nordhoff [1875]
Firsthand view of the 19th century US communal living movement, including the Shakers.

 Looking Backwards
by Edward Bellamy [1888]
Bellamy’s classic utopian vision of the year 2000.

 Cæsar’s Column
by Ignatius Donnelly [1890]
Donnelly’s dystopian novel with a utopian twist. This book contains many 19th century assumptions which may test your limits of political correctness, along with some stupifyingly correct predictions.

 News from Nowhere
by William Morris [1891]
William Morris’ vision of a socialist England.

 Unveiling a Parallel
by Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant [1893]
A trip to Mars, where a strange society which practices equality of the sexes.

 A Modern Utopia
by H.G. Wells [1909]
Wells’ ‘novel of ideas’ set on a parallel Earth.

 The Iron Heel
by Jack London [1909]
Jack London’s dystopian vision of a brutal future past.

 Garden Cities of To-morrow
by Ebenezer Howard [1902]
A very influential early city planner’s vision of the city of the future–which became a very successful reality.

 Herland
by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1906]
Visit a land where women are the only gender. They reproduce asexually, and worship a goddess. Classic of feminist scifi.

 

 The Story of Utopias
by Lewis Mumford [1922]
A survey of the literature of utopias, by a pioneer of city planning.


Due to copyright restrictions, an etext of George Orwell’s 1984 [External Site] is not available in the US. This link is to a copy on an Australian server. This file is not to be downloaded or read if you don’t live in Australia, because that would be double plus ungood thoughtcrime.