I’ve been reading through some classic books about utopias, or perfect societies - Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Callenbach’s Ecotopia, Huxley’s Island and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887.
All very fine utopias, but what strikes me is that none of the books I’ve read so far work very well as entertainment. The problem with writing about the perfect society is that when everyone is happy there are no stories. Stories require conflict. Dystopias seem to make for much better books, because it’s easier to develop interesting plots in them. The same argument can be made for the characters in these books.
Could anybody here recommend a good utopian novel (SF or otherwise) that both(a)contains an interesting, well thought out perfect society and (b)works well as a novel, with a captivating plot and interesting characters?
Try Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel “Herland,” written around 1915 or so. By the same author of the classic short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” this tale features an all-female society discovered by a few male explorers who are off trekking to the ends of the earth. As one might naturally assume, this Utopian novel focuses more on the socialization of gender roles than on religion or economy (as More’s “Utopia” does).
Is it a potboiler? No. Is it entertaining? About as entertaining as another story about a Utopian society . . .
James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon,” which is probably closer to mainstream entertainment than the other works, some of which probably were never written for entertainment value at all.
Try “Walden Two” by Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Really fun, wonderful stuff. For more info check out Amazon.
Of course, there’s always the very “serious” stuff like “Brave New World” or “1984” (not to mention the books you’ve listed). But if you’re looking for something fun and serious, try “Walden Two”.
As for Brave New World: it is a kind of Utopia, of course, but a very creepy one - people are happy but not free, and Huxley seems to imply that this is the best humanity can hope for (in the words of Mustapha Mond: “People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get”). It’s like Huxley is saying “You can have a society with liberty, democracy and dignity, or you can have a society where everybody is happy. Pick one.”
L.Neil Smith’s (Libertarian VP candidate for several elections) The Propability Broach: Libertarian utopianism, mostly not shrill. It manages a story by having a group of anti-utopian people (made of somewhat thicker cardboard than the usual anti-utopian villains…but only slightly) trying to destroy the libertarian paradise.
You lot can have Walden Two; I’d rather take Robert Graves’ Seven Days in New Crete.
Or… come to think of it, is Iain M. Banks’ Culture not a utopia? Could we consider, say Use of Weapons as a utopian book? Hey, I’m only asking…
Mildly interesting counterpoint: Somtow P. Sucharitkul (who often uses the less jaw-breaking byline of S.P. Somtow) wrote a series of SF stories set in a future galaxy where utopias were against the law, and “utopia hunters” went around overthrowing the governments of planets with suspiciously stable societies. As I recall - and it’s years since I read them - the system came to grief when somebody finally came up with a utopian system that “worked” in some convincing way, the details of which I cannot for the life of me remember. I think the overall series title was The Dawning Shadow; individual books included Utopia Hunters, The Light on the Sound and The Throne of Madness. I think. It’s been a while.
Looking Backwards was one of my favourite books. Bellamy’s accuracy to the way of life in modern times, with the exception of the socialism, was right on. Of course he couldn’t have predicted the role of computers and televisions in our lives. It was interesting how he predicted all of the worlds information coming into the home through a phoneline internet There was a small attempt at an entertaining story, and you were left hanging for a few pages towards the end of the book. I’m just shocked to see someone else that has read that book. I know of no one who has read it.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series actually explores the creation of a utopian society through over three hundred years of social and scientific development. Great plot, well-crafted characters, and a complete optimism about the future of the human race. Also, some of the best scientific research I’ve seen for a novel.
Yup! One of the talking gorillas is (IIRC) President.
The Dispossessed is a better book and Shevek is a far better (more three dimensional) character than Lt. Bear, but I’d still rather live in Smith’s world than LeGuin’s for all that LeGuin’s is more believable. Her ambiguous utopia has warts and wrinkles as opposed to Smith’s world which is shiny and perfect.
I once read the two of 'em back-to-back and had whiplash since both were using the term Propertarian, but had opposite views of whether the word was a compliment or not.
I can’t remember the details, but H G Wells’ Men Like Gods concerns a pretty utopian society, if I remember rightly. It’s about a mixed bag of 1920s figures accidentally arriving in a fantasy world, where their own political prejudices eventually bring tragedy.
Neither of these precisely explore utopias, but they’ve got interesting plots and raise many of the issues which seem to interest you: Into the Forest by Jean Hegland and Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy.
Larry Niven’s short story “Safe at Any Speed”. It’s in a couple of his anthologies. It’s a short story because, well, nothing happens in a utopia. The essence of drama is conflict, and in a utopia you try to minimize conflict. Whereas a Dystopia is fairly bristling with conflict.
Oh, I forgot – Eric Frank Russells’ The Great Explosion (and the short stories that it was cobbled together from) list several utopias set up by spacefaring groups in the centuries following the discovered of FTL travel (the titular “Great Explosion”). The military expedition sent out to gather them back into a “Terran Empire” fails when too many of the enlisted men join the utopias.: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/088184991X/qid=1005328080/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2_2/107-6885879-9758908
Actually, I thought Saint Thomas More’s “Utopia” was very entertaining, often hilarious. The very name “Utopia” was coined by More as a joke (it’s Greek for “nowhere”).
Idealists who’ve proposed various Utopias have OFTEN had to couch their serious proposals in humor, to hide truly subversive ideas within jokes, because they know their ideas may bring down the wrath of those in power. More faced this problem himself, and he used humor for his own protection.
A favorite sci-fi page-turner of mine is Gate to Women’s Country by Sherri S. Tepper. I’m not gonna say it’s great literature or anything, but it’s fun, entertaining, and the premise is very good.
D_Nice: I thought Looking Backwards was very commonly assigned in college courses. I’ve read it, of course, and taught excerpts from it. It’s such a fun book! I agree with you that it is quite amazing how right Bellamy got things. The credit cards and the distribution systems really amazed me. Now if I could only get someone to come over and clean my house…
