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Looking Backward

3.21 of 5 stars 3.21 · rating details · 1,861 ratings · 232 reviews

Set in Boston on December 26, 2000, but written before the turn of the nineteenth century, this classic Utopian novel is more significant and relevant than ever with its reappearance this millennium. Addressing moral and material concerns of late nineteenth century industrial America through romantic narrative, Bellamy suggests a fictionalized society in which war, poverty...more

Paperback, 220 pages

Published September 1st 2000 by Applewood Books (first published 1888)

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Oct 08, 2012 Justin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Forget Nostradamus--Bellamy predicted shopping malls, credit cards and cars in his fictitious time-traveling story written in 1887 and looking forward to the year 2000 ("In the Year Two-Thousaaaannnnndddd....in the Year Two-ThousAAAAANNNNDDDD!")

While some of his more optimistic and Utopian fantasies aren't realized by modern society and Bellamy's writing drags a bit in places, it's fun and carefree without the bitter aftertaste of 1984 or Brave New World looming over like storm clouds.

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Aug 28, 2012 Alex rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, reading-through-history, 2012

Oh hey, proto-scifi utopian whatever!

[LATER...]
Oh hey, book I never wrote a review for! Okay, here's what: Looking Backward was a blockbuster hit in 1887 - according to Wikipedia "the third-largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ." This is mystifying because it's basically a boring socialist tract.

"Does it then really seem to you that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you should expect security...more

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Apr 05, 2009 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopias-and-utopias, school, for-class

In Bellamy’s Boston in the year 2000, many things have changed from how they were in 1887, and the consensus among the book’s characters is that they have changed for the better. I do not imagine many people would argue the merits of the eradication of poverty and war. But when one looks more closely at gender roles, “utopia” becomes a bit more blurry.

The fact that women have jobs outside the home is exciting and progressive. However, they are still treated as quite secondary to men. Being “infe...more In Bellamy’s Boston in the year 2000, many things have changed from how they were in 1887, and the consensus among the book’s characters is that they have changed for the better. I do not imagine many people would argue the merits of the eradication of poverty and war. But when one looks more closely at gender roles, “utopia” becomes a bit more blurry.

The fact that women have jobs outside the home is exciting and progressive. However, they are still treated as quite secondary to men. Being “inferior of strength to men, and further disqualified industrially in special ways” women work within an entirely separate labor structure (257). The men discuss it as if the women are playing at work. “Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree of labor, to her sex” (257). Further discourse shows that rather than seeing women as deserving of work just as they are, men “let them” work as long as it does not interact with their “serious” industry. Dr. Leete says that “they permit them to work at all only because it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind” (257). In other words, they permit them to work because it makes them prettier. One sees the condescension even more clearly when Dr. Leete explains, “We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it” (259). And finally, to see how little society’s respect for women has “progressed,” we learn that their main role and value is still as producers of children. In fact “the higher positions in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex” (261).

Perhaps this is a challenge that no utopian writer has yet conquered: creating a society that everyone thinks is utopian. In Bellamy’s future society, Dr. Leete explains that “we have nothing to make laws about. The fundamental principles on which our society is founded settle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in your day called for legislation” (208). Even if we concede that the elimination of money and personal property would obviate many laws, how can we be convinced that there are no legal or moral issues on which people disagree?

The yearning to create a perfect society has captured many artists, and will no doubt continue to do so. But who decides what is perfect, much less what is better? Who defines progress?(less)

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Jul 16, 2008 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: utopia, 2008-books-read, classic

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book reads more like an economic manifesto than a work of fiction. A man from the late 1800s falls asleep and wakes up to find that he was in such a deep trance that it's now the year 2000. Nearly the entire book is a discourse on what has changed over the course of the century. Many of the changes really have happened, but most have not. Even though retirement at age 45 would be nice, the overall government-run utopia Bellamy suggests will never be possible unless human nature changes. I w...more

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Jun 17, 2008 Christy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: readinglist2-sf, science-fiction-and-fantasy, utopian

Edward Bellamy's socialist utopian novel Looking Backward tells the story of a Boston man who is placed in a mesmeric trance in 1887 and awakens in the year 2000. While he was entranced, the United States and much of the world has undergone major transformations, chiefly in economic and social organization. Most of the book is exposition, as the protagonist, Julian West, learns about the new, improved Boston from his rescuer, Dr. Leete. The Boston of the future is a utopia of organization, equal...more Edward Bellamy's socialist utopian novel Looking Backward tells the story of a Boston man who is placed in a mesmeric trance in 1887 and awakens in the year 2000. While he was entranced, the United States and much of the world has undergone major transformations, chiefly in economic and social organization. Most of the book is exposition, as the protagonist, Julian West, learns about the new, improved Boston from his rescuer, Dr. Leete. The Boston of the future is a utopia of organization, equality, and freedom. A very small portion of the novel is dedicated to putting this exposition in the context of an actual plot, in which Julian West falls in love (it's not very compelling).

The ideas Bellamy puts forth in this novel are interesting, both for his contemporaries and for myself. Looking Backward was a bestseller in its time, following only Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur in popularity. People organized societies to discuss and try to put his ideas into practice, utopian communities were founded based on his principles, and several major thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th century were influenced by the ideas of Bellamy's novel.

For myself, I am drawn to the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the book and its concern with social equality. He builds his argument on the idea of the brotherhood of man, saying, through the voice of Dr. Leete, "Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support" (105). Furthermore, he continues, "the solidarity of the race and the brotherhood of man, which to you were but fine phrases, are, to our thinking and feeling, ties as real and as vital as physical fraternity" (106).

Given this, the Boston of the 19th century must be seen in terms of horror and death. During one venture into 1887 Boston, West says,

"Presently, too, as I observed the wretched beings about me more closely, I perceived that they were all quite dead. Their bodies were so many living sepulchres. On each brutal brow was plainly written the hic jacet of a soul dead within. As I looked, horror struck, from one death's head to another, I was affected by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent spirit face superimposed upon each of these brutish masks I saw the ideal, the possible face that would have been the actual if mind and soul had lived. . . . Therefore now I found upon my garments the blood of this great multitude of strangled souls of my brothers. The voice of their blood cried out against me from the ground. Every stone of the reeking pavements, every brick of the pestilential rookeries, found a tongue and called after me as I fled: What has thou done with thy brother Abel?" (266).

Bellamy's description of the inequalities of the 19th century are the most interesting and vivid part of the book; his descriptions of the utopia of 2000 are not only less interesting and vivid (utopias are generally hard to bring to life anyway) but in some crucial ways unappealing. Although the idea of the brotherhood of man and the equality that concretizing this brotherhood brings really appeals to me, the particulars of this society are troubling in their insistent uniformity, apparent authoritarianism, and nationalism. All neighborhoods look the same, the government has absorbed all private interests, and the "national party" aims to "justify patriotism and raise it from an instinct to a rational devotion, by making the native land truly a father land, a father who kept the people alive and was not merely an idol for which they were expected to die" (207). Apparently, I am more of an anarchist than I thought (speaking of which, Bellamy dismisses anarchism as a mere tool of capitalism, a way to keep real reform from occurring).

Another element of Bellamy's utopian future that is both promising and troubling is the place of women in society. On the one hand, he makes an argument for freer personal relationships and the inclusion of women in the workplace, which is a really positive move for an author of the 1880s; on the other hand, however, he manages to remain firmly entrenched in traditional ideas about gender, including separate spheres for men and women and the concepts of women as simultaneously weaker and better than men. Dr. Leete explains that of course women work, just as men do; in fact, he says, they "have a women general-in-chief and are under exclusively feminine regime" and "the hours of women's work are considerably shorter than those of men's, more frequent vacations are granted, and the most careful provision is made for rest when needed. The men of this day so well appreciate that they owe to the beauty and grace of women the chief zest of their lives and their main incentive to effort, that they permit them to work at all only because it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind, during the period of maximum physical vigor" (210). He continues in this vein, saying, "We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy with it" (211).

Despite the weakness and separateness this reveals, and despite the condescension that appears to still come from men, women in this utopia "have risen to the full height of their responsibility as the wardens of the world to come, to whose keeping the keys of the future are confided. Their feeling of duty in this respect amounts to a sense of religious consecration. It is a cult in which they educate their daughters from childhood" (220). Together with Bellamy's statements that "women who have been both wives and mothers . . . alone fully represent their sex" (213) and that "it is in giving full play to the differences of sex rather than in seeking to obliterate them, as was apparently the effort of some reformers in your day, that the enjoyment of each by itself and the piquancy which each has for the other, are alike enhanced" (211), this statement about women's responsibility and religious consecration looks ahead to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's glorification of motherhood and women's society in Herland, another major American utopian text that links socialism and a form of feminism. (less)

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Aug 22, 2007 Daniel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

in the year 2000, humanity will enjoy harmony, happiness and worldwide peace in a universal socialist utopia, and this is how we will fall in love:

"In her face, pity contended in a sort of divine spite against the obstacles which reduced it to impotence. Womanly compassion surely never wore a guise more lovely. Such beauty and such goodness quite melted me, and it seemed that the only fitting response... was just to tell her the truth.... I had no fear that she would be angry. She was too pitifu...more

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Apr 29, 2008 Lorna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Teen and older

This is a great book about a man from 1887 who finds himself in the year 2000. It was actually written in 1887 and the author, Edward Bellamy actually predicts some things such as radio and credit cards. In the year 2000 he finds that all social class differences have been erased and there is a Utopian society. I thought his view of what the year 2000 would be like was fascinating and some of his ideas of how to implement a Utopian society were thought provoking. This is one of my favorite books...more

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Mar 22, 2013 David Harris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

* from a reader in Bellamy's future, December 14, 2004 *

I agree with other reviewers who have pointed out that Bellamy's book wasn't intended to foretell the future but rather to draw attention to ugly aspects of the society and times in which he lived. However, since others have already so eloquently dealt with that aspect of the book, I thought it might be fun to dwell on the sci-fi aspect of the book in my review.

Written in 1887, this novel is full of predictions about the year 2000. Bellamy...more * from a reader in Bellamy's future, December 14, 2004 *

I agree with other reviewers who have pointed out that Bellamy's book wasn't intended to foretell the future but rather to draw attention to ugly aspects of the society and times in which he lived. However, since others have already so eloquently dealt with that aspect of the book, I thought it might be fun to dwell on the sci-fi aspect of the book in my review.

Written in 1887, this novel is full of predictions about the year 2000. Bellamy gets a few things right, and he gets a few things wrong. Things have changed so radically since his day that it's fun to discover what a person from that time thought might come about in our time.

While airplanes and international phonecalls might have been foreseen, who could have imagined computers that understand human speech or even the Walkman - something that's pretty mundane by today's standards? And who could have possibly imagined such bizarre musical genres as disco, techno and rap? I suspect an equal number of surprises are in store for our descendants 130 years down the road.

Bellamy doesn't foresee any of the above. Nor does he mention automobiles or recorded music, two ideas that must surely have been under development already in his time. Instead, he foresees a time when various styles of music will be available 24 hours a day via telephone, all provided by real-live musicians. A time when all the public sidewalks of Boston will have awnings to keep the rain off those who get caught out in the middle of a rainstorm. And, if his predictions about how government will be run in our time are flat out wrong, the resulting situation isn't so far off. After all, the vast majority of Americans and many others around the globe live like the kings and queens that ruled their ancestors.

But if a greater number of people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and many other parts of the world still live without adequate food and shelter, it only shows that we still have our work cut out for us. (More so than ever today, I suppose one might have to say.)

Bellamy's prose is surprisingly easy to read considering how long ago it was written. The reader does stumble across odd expressions here and there, but it's less strange than one might guess it would be. And the strangeness of the prose is part of what makes the reading interesting.

Also, the fact that Bellamy's predictions are so different from what one might guess at first thought suggests some interesting differences in thinking and culture between people living in the same country 100 years apart.

Decades of carefully crafted propoganda have convinced most Americans that big government is anathema while big business grows and grows until today a company like Wal-Mart has a virtual stranglehold on major suppliers of many types of goods. I agree with the indictment of big government, but I think it's the 'big' part that's the most dangerous thing, no matter what the organization.

In summary, I agree with many who feel there's still something to be gained from what we learn in this book despite the gross failure of communism and the problems, large and small, that plague socialist programs like Canadian and European national health care.

Visionaries in the business world and the sciences are constantly working on new models for improving our life. Paul Hawken tells some of their stories in his book _The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability_.(less)

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Feb 13, 2013 Joanne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this subsequent to B.F. Skinner's Walden Two. The books are similar in that the story serves as a platform for the writers' ideas for an alternative social system. I found Looking Backward to have a slightly more engaging plot than Walden Two.

In both books the protagonists are pedantic, condescending, all-knowing and infinitely indulgent in their explanations and erudition about the societies in which they live. The characters are flat - intended only to carry the concepts to the reader....more

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Jan 21, 2013 JD rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a novel, this book isn't much. That isn't a mark against it, though - the story serves as a light frame to build an explanation of socialism around, and it does that very well.

Looking Backward is the best and clearest way I have ever seen socialism presented (although that is not hard, since I have never seen socialism presented in any light other than a negative one), and in almost every way it seems better than capitalism.

It raises questions in me that I have never had occasion to consider...more As a novel, this book isn't much. That isn't a mark against it, though - the story serves as a light frame to build an explanation of socialism around, and it does that very well.

Looking Backward is the best and clearest way I have ever seen socialism presented (although that is not hard, since I have never seen socialism presented in any light other than a negative one), and in almost every way it seems better than capitalism.

It raises questions in me that I have never had occasion to consider. Why, indeed, should we not all work together? Why should one have so much more than another, when all people are created equal? Why waste so much manpower and economic power with endless duplication of enterprise? Why should many of us live under constant threat of poverty and hunger, when the good earth is rich, and can support us all equally?

Five hundred million people live in poverty in Africa, one of the poorest regions on Earth. Two hundred million in China. Fifteen million in the United Kingdom. Forty million people live in poverty even in America, the richest nation on Earth. This past year the people on the Forbes 400 list have accumulated an additional two hundred billion dollars ($200,000,000,000), while at the same time median family income in America dropped by 4 percent.

After reading this book, perhaps I might call myself a socialist.

----
For thirty years I had lived among them, and yet I seemed to have never noted before how drawn and anxious were their faces, of the rich as of the poor, the refined, acute faces of the educated as well as the dull masks of the ignorant. And well it might be so, for I saw now, as never before I had seen so plainly, that each as he walked constantly turned to catch the whispers of a spectre at his ear, the spectre of Uncertainty. "Do your work never so well," the spectre was whispering, - "rise early and toil till late, rob cunningly or serve faithfully, you shall never know security. Rich you may be now and still come to poverty at last. Leave never so much wealth to your children, you cannot buy the assurance that your son may not be the servant of your servant, or that your daughter will not have to sell herself for bread."(less)

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Dec 28, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm so glad I read this, I rather enjoy utopian fiction and it's certainly fascinating to glimpse at what Bellamy hoped and imagined for the year 2000. It feels funny writing from someone else's future.

Looking Backward, although in form a fanciful romance, is intended, in all seriousness, as a forecast, in accordance with the principles of evolution, of the next stage in the industrial and social development of humanity...

It's definitely a rather soporific vision of a socialist future with a v...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Donna rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 29, 2012 Rick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Bellamy uses a novel to imagine a utopia organized around an American brand of socialism. Written in the late 1880s, Looking Backward was a huge bestseller, third only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben Hur in turn of the century America and selling millions of copies worldwide. The premise is that Julian West, a gentleman of upper crust Bostonian leisure falls asleep on May 30, 1887, a mesmerist facilitating his insomnia-delayed sleep way too successfully, and is awakened on September 10, 2000. Bosto...more Bellamy uses a novel to imagine a utopia organized around an American brand of socialism. Written in the late 1880s, Looking Backward was a huge bestseller, third only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben Hur in turn of the century America and selling millions of copies worldwide. The premise is that Julian West, a gentleman of upper crust Bostonian leisure falls asleep on May 30, 1887, a mesmerist facilitating his insomnia-delayed sleep way too successfully, and is awakened on September 10, 2000. Boston in 1887 is an urban pigsty with poverty, pollution, labor strife, and corrosive class divisions. Boston in 2000 is utopia. Everything is fair, abundant, civilized, and well-ordered. The government manages everything in the name of the people and does so without corruption, mis-management, favoritism, or abuse of power. People retire at 45. Everyone is educated—even women! And life is governed by moderation, competence, reason and logic and a consensus on the common good.

Such plot as there is consists of two elements. One, will Mr. West ever not be surprised to discover that the way the future has solved some intractable social or economic issue was obvious, simple and logically irrefutable? Two, is Mr. West dreaming the future or actually awake in it? Not to spoil anyone’s fun but the answer to the first question is clear early on and the unchanging pattern of conversation between West and his host, Dr. Leete (and his companionable wife and lovely daughter, who coincidentally has the same first name as West’s fiancée from the 19th century—I wonder if that might lead to anything?), doesn’t ever challenge the pattern. It’s not often that I think favorably of Donald Trump but Bellamy might have been better served by having Julian be more like the Donald—arrogant, insistent, stupidly sure of himself, and dedicated to the proposition that any system that rewards him as well as it does is in no need of repair. Better than the Donald would have been any of the Robber Baron sensibilities in a character. It would have provided some tension to the story, even conflict. Instead there is none. It’s a series of predictable conversations about why this is so much better than it was. The book might as well have been titled Boy Did We Get That Wrong; You Guys Are So Smart!

The book’s indictment of irresponsible capitalism is strong (and not without many verifying echoes of economic catastrophe from 1888 to 2008) but it takes a dismissive back seat to the extolling of the virtues of the utopian Boston. Bellamy’s seer hat does anticipate the radio (via a telephone) and the credit card (even the name) but not the computer, the automobile, plane or space travel, TV, the electric guitar or changes in taste in music. This could be because the novel is mostly a colloquy about principles of societal organization or because Bellamy, as a social critic, lacks the imagination of a fantasist/science fiction writer. (A Randian exceptional man devotee might suggest that the absence of anything radically different is an unintended admission that the new utopia doesn’t allow the entrepreneurial freedom that might lead to those sorts of inventions. Let’s face it America you can’t have both the iPhone and a just society.) Nor does it much acknowledge the divisions of race or the mixed blessings of organized religions (though it’s not anti-religious at all), or individual and social vices other than associating them with the ills of capitalism (alcohol, drugs, prostitution).

More importantly than the lack of a vibrant plot or clever imaginative predictives of the future, Looking Backward lacks any kind of nitty-gritty description of how society changed. It wasn’t violent, we’re told, more like a Saul becomes Paul on the road to Damascus kind of thing. America (and then the world) just kind of woke up one day and saw through the madness of blind competition, corrosive social inequality, and the devastating consequences of a boom and bust economy and, like a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical, said to itself, “Hey gang! Whattya say, let’s build a perfect society!” It’s simplistic and weak reading but an important artifact, not like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is an interesting read in its own right. While too many elements of the description of 1887 Boston are as we move deeper into the second decade of the 21st century still unaddressed—and some reforms that did address various social ills are now under siege—you’d think the Looking Backward would still be important as ever but, alas, not as it’s written. For that there is Dickens, Sinclair, Steinbeck and others.(less)

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Aug 10, 2012 David Cain rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've always enjoyed science fiction and was surprised to discover when I recently learned of this book that it was one of the top blockbusters in the late nineteenth century. Never heard about this one growing up in conservative Louisiana (USA), which turns out not to be a surprise because this is slanted quite strongly in a liberal direction. This is not so much a novel as a philosophical treatise disguised inside the wrappings of a science fiction story. Fans of the science and technology aspe...more I've always enjoyed science fiction and was surprised to discover when I recently learned of this book that it was one of the top blockbusters in the late nineteenth century. Never heard about this one growing up in conservative Louisiana (USA), which turns out not to be a surprise because this is slanted quite strongly in a liberal direction. This is not so much a novel as a philosophical treatise disguised inside the wrappings of a science fiction story. Fans of the science and technology aspects of sci-fi will find virtually nothing to exite their interest here, but for someone who wants a wide-eyed and hopeful look at the future this is a good place to start. Most of the chapters outline Bellamy's vision for a socialist utopia. His ideas have a some merit but ignore a host of factors that make this system impractical at best, and largely unworkable.

The most annoying aspect of this work is Bellamy's treatment of women. He indicates that "weakness" is one of the defining characteristics of females, and so has envisioned an entirely separate set of career options for them: "Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree of labor, to her sex. Moreover, the hours of women's work are considerably shorter than those of men's, more frequent vacations are granted, and the most careful provision is made for rest when needed." And again, "We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it." Very idiotic and offensive to my mind. Still, I suppose you can't be too critical of such a world view when taken within the context of Bellamy's time and culture. To be fair, it was more than 80 years following publication of this work before feminism began to take hold in the United States.

This is decidedly NOT great literature, but despite its flaws it is worth a look both for its historical popularity as well as its good-intentioned and optimistic philosophy.
(less)

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Mar 04, 2012 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It really helps to read the 2oth-century forward, to understand how amazingly popular the book was in its time (120 years ago)--as a well-developed utopian fantasy, propped up by a silly romantic plot. The forward tells us that economists scoff at Bellamy's equally romantic conviction that the world could have done a 180 and become a place of equity, justice and harmony. It also mentions that scholar often credit the book as the first time they took a serious look at socialism.

I think you can't...more

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Dec 20, 2011 Wayne marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Wayne by: a friendly bookworm stranger

As I was nearing the local railway station the other day in my usual rush, a young woman came walking along engrossed in a book. It struck me that it must have been a bloody good book to risk life and limb like that, so I stopped her with the obvious question and she told me about "Looking Backwards". As I have an essay to read on Utopias ie. "No Island is an Island" by Carlo Ginzburg, and also have copies of Thomas More's and Samuel Butler's famous attempts to hopefully read in conjunction with...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As an intellectual exercise I found this book to be very engaging and interesting. If you are excited by books that make you think, or attempt to draw you into open-minded perspectives, than I quickly refer you to this book, as it is slim, quick, and at least engaging.

Although the idea of Mr. West's time travel is rather comical (who hasn't fallen asleep for 100 years?) and although I kept waiting for him to deteriorate like Mel Gibson in Forever Young, the actual movement of plot was at first f...more As an intellectual exercise I found this book to be very engaging and interesting. If you are excited by books that make you think, or attempt to draw you into open-minded perspectives, than I quickly refer you to this book, as it is slim, quick, and at least engaging.

Although the idea of Mr. West's time travel is rather comical (who hasn't fallen asleep for 100 years?) and although I kept waiting for him to deteriorate like Mel Gibson in Forever Young, the actual movement of plot was at first fun. In my view, the best parts were West's discourses on individuality and the self, when tampered with by striking one's own environment. What becomes of a person when we distort the context of the person?

As most know, this is less a novel and more philosophical rhetoric on socialism. If we understand this, then we can forgive the poor narrative devices in favor of the propaganda. Still, the middle section of the book is largely pages upon pages of esoteric talk that makes you wish you read faster. As to Bellamy's Socialism itself, let me be the first to say that I am humanly in love with ideas of social equity, proper education systems, and the dissolution of class warfare and poverity, but Bellamy's utopia is just that, a utopia. And based on human experience, we know that utopias are fictions. What's more, the deeper you get into the text, the more you begin to see Bellamy's (nee socialism's) ignorance concerning Darwinism (if you so believe that), independence, constitutional US rights, and basic human morality. To boot, within are laced old fashioned ideas of homophobia, sexism, and religious intolerance. The individual is completely sacraficed to the system in a way more frightening than in 1984 and Bellamy goes as far as to suggest that there is no jealousy or crime any longer because of social parity (!!!). It's strange to me that he would suggest human nature is a result of the system. In my view, as it was built by humans, the system would be better described as a result of human nature. Case in point, Bellamy asserts through his characters that it was "natural" that man would "evolve" into the modern system of socialism by the year 2000 because that was their natural inclination. Update: it's 2011, and he was wrong. Not very natural after all.

He's also very critical of other ages. I have an intolerance for intolerance.

So, good read for thinking, but it irked my time and again how off the author was in his own theories, no matter how noble they were in the pondering.(less)

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Oct 14, 2010 Andrew Carr rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The first two chapters where fairly interesting as far as leading up to the 113 year sleep, Mr. West was in love with a woman and was planning to buy a house for his future wife. The one thing I found odd was that who had a fireproof concrete basement in 1887 but the storyline is interesting. Aside from that the majority of the book was about how he had woke up 113 years later and how the economy and daily lifestyles differ from the two time periods.
Chapters 2-11 mainly discussed how the job ma...more The first two chapters where fairly interesting as far as leading up to the 113 year sleep, Mr. West was in love with a woman and was planning to buy a house for his future wife. The one thing I found odd was that who had a fireproof concrete basement in 1887 but the storyline is interesting. Aside from that the majority of the book was about how he had woke up 113 years later and how the economy and daily lifestyles differ from the two time periods.
Chapters 2-11 mainly discussed how the job market was arranged and how wages were arranged in the year 2000. West was slightly confused but never entirely understood why everyone received the same amount of credit even though one may have had worked harder or more than someone else. Although he slowly learned about certain things he still didn’t know everything about his new world later on he learned about the new shopping system. He understood how the system worked but didn’t know why it worked. The shopping system was much simpler because everything was in the same spot and everything is the same brand. Though this was some what interesting it went on to long and needed a more interesting plot not just comparing and contrasting the different time frames.
The majority of the book was discussion between Dr. Leete and Mr. West about the differences of present day Boston and the old Boston that Mr. West was from. The major point of the book was I guess to explain the differences between time frames of the old and an imaginary perfect present day. Towards the middle of the story Dr. Leete explains how people use doctors, and Mr. West learns about what sounds like a radio and is fascinated by how things in present day Boston work.
The overall plot of this book was dull nothing (besides Mr. West waking up 113 years in the future) was very thrilling. The comparing between the two times was somewhat interesting because the new Boston is a perfect and mostly fair world while the old Boston is like a free-for-all everyone has to provide for his or her own family. The conclusion of this book was somewhat predictable but that could have been the goal of the author to give you a hint of what was going to happen. The fact that he was just dreaming was as i had said it was predictable and also the conclusion of the book could have had been more unsuspecting. Overall I did not enjoy this book it was very dull and not very interesting but that is just my opinion. Others who enjoy utopian novels will mostly enjoy this book because it is a unique book, but as I have already stated, it compared the two time frames the majority of the time.
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Aug 12, 2009 sdw rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Julian West was an insomniac. Unable to sleep, he used his wealth to construct a fabulous sound-proof light-proof underground bedroom that only his servant Sawyer knew about. He hired an animal mangetist to put him to sleep with the understanding that he would be awakened by Sawyer in the morning. Unfortunately his house burned down in the middle of the night. No one awakened him. He was safe in the room that no one knew about but was presumed dead. One-hundred and thirteen years later, a man do...more Julian West was an insomniac. Unable to sleep, he used his wealth to construct a fabulous sound-proof light-proof underground bedroom that only his servant Sawyer knew about. He hired an animal mangetist to put him to sleep with the understanding that he would be awakened by Sawyer in the morning. Unfortunately his house burned down in the middle of the night. No one awakened him. He was safe in the room that no one knew about but was presumed dead. One-hundred and thirteen years later, a man doing construction on the grounds of his old home found him and awakened him.

This highly influential novel is the quintessential utopian vision. Julian West awakens to socialism in the year 2000. Most of the novel consists of him asking Dr. Leete, the man who found him, “How does shopping happen now?” “Who goes to college now?” and hearing long answers. It sounds dreadfully boring but I was captivated. Reading this novel allowed me to see its power and better grapple with its influence.

This is not a socialist utopia as one would imagine it now. It is shockingly centralized and lacks democracy. The special role of those with particular talents for the arts reminded me vaguely and uncomfortably of Ayn Rand, even as Bellamy conceived of all men and women as aspiring towards a greatness of spirit with a lifetime love of learning and passion for the arts. Since men and women retire at 45 and remain fully supported by the state for the duration, they have time to grow in their own means. Work in the industrial army (for there is no other army) is the greatest service to the state.

Life stands still. It is so perfect that congress needs to make no laws. Conditions do not change. The industrial army is regulated, prices are regulated, but nothing really changes. Societal stasis has been achieved.

Women can work. But the highest respect is given to women who have been both mothers and wives. Women work easier jobs with more vacation time than army. They are not part of the regular industrial army but have their own auxiliary branch. Men worship women’s role as the caretakers of the world so much that men only allow women to work because it is mentally and emotionally good for every human to have a job. This is a vision embracing older troubled notions of respecting women, based on a gender binary and with no interest in true equality. I found this fascinating rather than troubling, due to its year of publication and wide influence.

Oh, and the novel is told with the superficial frame of a silly unengaging love story.
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May 29, 2011 Orion rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kobo-on-palm-pre

Looking Backward, while written over 120 years ago, is about what the author envisioned the 21st century could have been like if the USA had embraced Socialist principles. Very popular when it was written (right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur), it is about a young 19th century upper class white man's surprising re-introduction to society when he wakes up from a 113 year nap at the dawn of the 21st century. Similar to Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and Woody Allen's Sleeper in...more Looking Backward, while written over 120 years ago, is about what the author envisioned the 21st century could have been like if the USA had embraced Socialist principles. Very popular when it was written (right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur), it is about a young 19th century upper class white man's surprising re-introduction to society when he wakes up from a 113 year nap at the dawn of the 21st century. Similar to Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and Woody Allen's Sleeper in plot structure but told without parody or humor, in Looking Backward the world has changed dramatically while our hero slept.

Bellamy's hero is awakened by a retired doctor and his wife and daughter when they find him sleeping in a chamber under their garden. This family slowly introduces him to the wonders of a modern Socialist state where the nation is the only employer and the people's army works for the common good. Each chapter explores a different aspect of this modern cooperative society. Chapter 15 describes Bellamy's vision of the future of publishing, 16 discusses art, 19 is devoted to law, and 20 to education. The ideas are mostly presented through dialogs with the doctor with few actual visits and interactions. Economic progress is stressed over technological change.

Written before the Great Depression, Communism, National Socialism, two World Wars and the Holocaust, Bellamy's book blames much of the world's problems on social inequality and the pursuit of personal gain. He envisions the United States leading the world into a just brotherhood where humans work together for the common good. It is interesting to read today Bellamy's vision of looking back from an alternative world that never came into being although fervently desired by many at the time. For Bellamy and his readers the enemy was Capitalism and salvation was to be had in Communism and National Socialism. He envisions a world where these ideas were embraced by the USA instead of Stalin and Hitler and led to a Utopian society. (less)

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Jan 13, 2011 Myles rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, topian

You are riding on a coach, you don't know what your destination is but the days are long and overcast, the road rough and pitted. None of this is helped by the unwieldiness of the coach itself, an open topped monstrosity of iron and timber with uncounted passengers jostling for the limited seats, the passengers only outnumbered by the masses pulling the coach forward.

Every so often the coach will hit a particularly big rut and throw a passenger or two to the ground. Those fallen are forced to ta...more You are riding on a coach, you don't know what your destination is but the days are long and overcast, the road rough and pitted. None of this is helped by the unwieldiness of the coach itself, an open topped monstrosity of iron and timber with uncounted passengers jostling for the limited seats, the passengers only outnumbered by the masses pulling the coach forward.

Every so often the coach will hit a particularly big rut and throw a passenger or two to the ground. Those fallen are forced to take up a rope and haul. Sometimes, not so often, a man will find the opportunity to scrabble up the side of the carriage and find a seat. No one's seat is guaranteed and all are in perpetual danger of joining the team up front, but not one will think of a way to better the situation for fear he'll only lose his place.

Such is Bellamy's metaphor of post-industrial society that opens Looking Backward, and it is a powerful one at that. There is little doubt that this novel was meant as a vehicle to carry the author's socialist ideology to wider audience, but there is a solid story beneath the rhetoric. Julian West is a man thrown out of his depth into a future he can barely understand and it's hard not to feel sympathy for him. The other characters of note are the pedantic bore Dr. Leete, who insists on explaining the minutiae of how society operates in the year 2000, and his lovely daughter Edith, who provides West with a real connection to his new present.

There are a few other minor characters, including Mrs. Leete who makes several polite remarks and suggests a novel to our hero, but for the most part it is an insular world that Bellamy presents us with. Everything has been nationalized, conscription involves employment over deployment and everyone, man, woman or child, receive the same amount of income from the government in exchange for their service to the industry of their own choice.

Because everything has been nationalized, all "shops" have the same inventory, meaning no trip need be longer than 5 minutes from home, entertainment comes not from the theater, which seems to have ceased to exist, or concert halls, as for a small share of their allotment every family can have music via telephone lines in their homes. Church services are mostly listened to in this manner as well. Most telling of all food is centrally produced/cooked rather than in the home, to save labor and cost, so almost always dines out. Except dining out involves going to a private dining room in the civic center.

There is much to admire in Bellamy's vision of Utopia, but what I found most prescient was not the prediction of "credit cards" but the self-imposed isolation of the greater part of society in the name of convenience. No shopping trips, no theater or concerts, no congregation.

Much of that sense of isolation has to do with the protection the Leetes offered West until he adapts to modern life but it is still odd how West did not once seek out or talk to anyone else in the future and the apparent lack of curiosity on the part of the public.

Being part political tract Looking Backwards suffers a little from the exposition of Dr. Leete, but it is the personal revelations of West towards his own society, and Edith's complicated relationship with him that are at the core of the story and made this a runaway bestseller in its day.

Bellamy wrote during the height of America's "gilded age" when industry and political corruptness were reaching their peak, and more wealth then before imagined was in the fewer and fewer hands. Sounds familiar doesn't it? There are enough parallels that can be drawn between our age and the late Victorians that makes Bellamy's explication of its problems and ideas of solution relevant and thought-provoking to us moderns.(less)

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Dec 04, 2012 Dorer002 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought the book had a very interesting premise. The idea of reading a book in 2012, written in 1887, about a person from the 1880s time traveling to the year 2000, is a bit convoluted, but it was fun. I'd never heard of this book, but it apparently made quite a splash, and is considered one of the most influential books on Marxism/socialism. I did think the idea that the future was perfect was a bit silly, especially the explanation of how women all love their roles and have their own types o...more

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Aug 27, 2011 Dean Summers rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ideas, scifi

Edward Bellamy is a distant relative of a friend of mine. Until my friend sent me a link to a Wikipedia article about Uncle Ed, I’d never heard of him. But I thought I’d take a look at one of his books, which I was to learn was one of the most popular, most influential books of late Nineteenth and early Twentieth-Century America. Indeed, all over America it spawned Bellamy clubs devoted to promoting Edward Bellamy’s social theories.

Looking Backward was written in 1887. By the magic of imaginatio...more Edward Bellamy is a distant relative of a friend of mine. Until my friend sent me a link to a Wikipedia article about Uncle Ed, I’d never heard of him. But I thought I’d take a look at one of his books, which I was to learn was one of the most popular, most influential books of late Nineteenth and early Twentieth-Century America. Indeed, all over America it spawned Bellamy clubs devoted to promoting Edward Bellamy’s social theories.

Looking Backward was written in 1887. By the magic of imagination, it looks backward onto 1887 from the year 2000. It anticipates, for America and for the greater part of the world, a workers’ paradise that arrives, not by violence, but by the good common sense of people everywhere who, when the time is ripe, give in to the irresistible force of social evolution.

For me, part of the fun of the book was the way it sometimes resonated, sometimes clashed, with four other works: Plato’s The Republic, Voltaire’s Candide, Marx’ The Communist Manifesto, and Skinner’s Walden II.

In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy is by turn clairvoyant (he anticipates the credit card, electronic home entertainment, and a Walmart-style shopping center), incisive (his critique of capitalism is on target), quaint (he imagines that all Americans will eventually adopt the fashions, the manners, and the values of the Nineteenth-Century American privileged class), naïve (he believes you can end human rivalry by eliminating the perceived need for rivalry), chauvinistic (his view of women is of sugar and spice and everything nice), pedantic (he has given us one talkie book!), sweet (he breaks up the talk with the story of a budding romance), and engaging (for all the talk, and for all the odd little quirks, he keeps you reading).

But, most of all, from the perspective of the actual, factual Twenty-First Century, in Looking Backward, Bellamy is profoundly disturbing. By Bellamy’s reckoning, there should never have been a Great War, but there was. There should never have been a Russian Revolution, but there was. There should never have been a Great Depression, or a Second World War, or the atrocities of National Socialism, or any such, year after year after year. There should never have been a Stalin, or a Hitler, or a Mao, or any of their ilk, year after year after year. But there have been. So, why? That it so urgently raises that one question is why Looking Backward remains relevant this side of the year 2000.(less)

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Aug 22, 2011 Scrappycarol rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: quit-before-finished

I first read this book in High School and decided to read it again after (ahem) quite a few years' passage of time. After all that time in between reads, the change in perspective is interesting. Now I can see it for what it is... a Socialist manifesto. The society described (at times in mind-numbing detail) sounds great, for the most part, aside from the patronizing view of women (to be expected from a book writen in the 1880's). However, with human nature being what it is, it is all quite the...more

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Oct 15, 2010 Faith rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The classical fiction book: Looking Backward 2000-1887;Written by:Edward Bellamy was on okay book. The title suggest that this book is about the past. Bellamy wrote this book in 1894, and Digireads.com published it in 2005.
Thirteen year old Julian West, was born in the nineteenth century. He was engaged to Edith Bartlett, who was a Boston aristocrat. I don't understand why a thirteen year old would want to be married, but apparently marriages were arranged back then. They had planned to get mar...more The classical fiction book: Looking Backward 2000-1887;Written by:Edward Bellamy was on okay book. The title suggest that this book is about the past. Bellamy wrote this book in 1894, and Digireads.com published it in 2005.
Thirteen year old Julian West, was born in the nineteenth century. He was engaged to Edith Bartlett, who was a Boston aristocrat. I don't understand why a thirteen year old would want to be married, but apparently marriages were arranged back then. They had planned to get married once their new house was finishes, but due to workers going on strike the project was delayed for over a year. If i had written this book I would have, had Julian working on the house while the workers were on strike.
While waiting on his house, he stilldid alot with Edith's family. On May 30,1887 they celebrated Decoration Day. Decoration Day is a holiday, which is pretty much like what we call Memorial Day. If Decoration Day is like Memorial Day, then why not just call it Memorial Day. That night Julian goes to bed, in his underground room, he goes into a deep sleep. He stays asleep for one-hundred years. I don't see how it is possile to stay asleep for one-hundred years,even if your on very strong sleeping pills. Usually if your asleep for that long your dead.
Once Julian finally wakes up,he is in a strang house. In this house are unfamilar faces, that inform him that it is the year 2000. At first he thinks his friends are playing a trick on him. If I was Julian I probably would have freaked. First of all your in a house that is not yours, with strange people, and it's the year 2000, it just doesn't sound possible. Instead of leaving the house he goes back to sleep. Okay, if you have been asleep for one-hundred years, why would you want to go back to sleep? When he wakes up for the second time, Dr. Leete is standing by him, and he assures him that this is not a dream. As it turns out, Julian's house burnt down the night of May 30,1887, and the only thing that saved his life was his underground room.
Honestly, I did not like this book. The future and perfect worlds does not interest me. People are not perfect and neith is anything they do. No matter how hard you try, someone is going to mess up. Life isn't always going to be fair and some days nothing will go right or not the way you planned,but it's just a part of life. A perfect world to me is where we have the freedom to do what we want, but still be under a few rules.
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Aug 10, 2010 Vince rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book – a science fiction from 1887 – about a fictional future year 2000 utopian society. It was recommend by Patrick Allitt, a lecturer for the Teaching Company in one of their audio courses.

It is very interesting in the layout and the existence of both credit cards and sort of “on line- on demand” entertainment.

It is a bit repetitive but that much. It drags a bit but it is a view from a century and a quarter ago. I do not believe it would work, the society, but it is interesting to...more

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Jun 29, 2009 J. Dunn rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, novels, american, 19th-century, utopia, scifi, socialism, capitalism, propaganda, labor, culture, customs, economics, gilded-age, owned, have-etext

Man, what a crappy socialist utopia. Americans would figure out how to make a socialist utopia as saccharine and colorless and authoritarian as possible, wouldn't we?

So, I read this out of historical interest, because it was a landmark work in American leftism, sold millions of copies in the 1890's, etc. I kinda wanted to know what got early American leftists excited. Evidently, it was very-thinly-novelized half-informed hectoring about proto-Marxist political economy. He sketched just barely en...more Man, what a crappy socialist utopia. Americans would figure out how to make a socialist utopia as saccharine and colorless and authoritarian as possible, wouldn't we?

So, I read this out of historical interest, because it was a landmark work in American leftism, sold millions of copies in the 1890's, etc. I kinda wanted to know what got early American leftists excited. Evidently, it was very-thinly-novelized half-informed hectoring about proto-Marxist political economy. He sketched just barely enough of his utopian future to force the medicine down. For a supposed seminal work of scifi futurism, there's just no imagination at all... he even goes so far as to kinda just give up and make his year 2000 Boston look almost exactly like his 1887 Boston, just with less squalor and more monumental architecture. There are a few futurist stabs at what the society and technology of tomorrow would look like, but they're all ancillary and don't seem to have much at all to do with his political and economic vision. I don't know how anyone could have possibly read this for entertainment.

And what he does sketch out is not very appealing. He had a big hardon for organizing things on a military footing, and his utopia is awfully authoritarian. The results he posits seem pretty ok, but the means of getting to them are either implausible or would likely preclude those results. And everything is annoyingly, Socratically just-so.

And then to top it all off he has the temerity to throw in a totally cloying, shallow, and implausible romance, topped off with a gratuitous double-twist ending, just to mess with us.

Ok, ok, I shouldn't be so hard on him. This guy was essentially an amateur, trying to find the best way he could to expound his political ideas to a large audience. And obviously, it worked. I just can't believe this had such broad appeal. Americans must have been absolutely starving for good socialist agitprop back in the populist era. I had hoped it would be interesting on its own terms, but it's really only worth reading as a curiosity of historical and political interest, and barely at that.(less)

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May 02, 2012 Aidan Nancarrow rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantastika

Here is book that launched a movement...albeit a short lived one. In the late 1800s, Looking Backward was one of the biggest bestsellers of the century, only second to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur. In the wake of its publication more than 150 'Nationalist Clubs' sprung up to try and realize the book's philosophy and although they did not achieve very much politically, the book's influence can not be denied.

Looking Backward can be taken as the epitome of a late 19th century middle-class Socialis...more Here is book that launched a movement...albeit a short lived one. In the late 1800s, Looking Backward was one of the biggest bestsellers of the century, only second to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur. In the wake of its publication more than 150 'Nationalist Clubs' sprung up to try and realize the book's philosophy and although they did not achieve very much politically, the book's influence can not be denied.

Looking Backward can be taken as the epitome of a late 19th century middle-class Socialism. Unlike more Marxist and more working-class oriented Socialisms, Bellamy's political philosophy is one based, not on class-conflict, but on a love of efficiency, order, shared prosperity, shared success, and a Statist economy-of-scale. The plot of the book is minimal and mainly serves as a vehicle for Bellamy's fictitious mouthpiece to explain the workings of his Utopian society. The narrator, Julian West, falls into an improbably long sleep in the year 1887, only to be softy awakened by a family living in the year 2000. In the "Twentieth Century" all businesses have been consolidated together as a function of the National Government. There is no money, since all persons receive a yearly credit from the State that is more than sufficient to supply for all their wants and needs. Shopping, cooking, dinning, and all other sorts of tasks and chores are centralized and efficiently managed in a top-down manner by the State, while maintaining absolute freedom of choice on the part of the individual or family. All persons (male and female) labor in the great 'Industrial Army' from the age of 21 to 45 (doctors, teachers and other 'liberal professions' have their own parallel organization outside the 'Army'), when they are manumitted from service and allowed to live in leisure. The United States is now an anachronistic name, since state governments have all been abolished in favor of a singular national government. Politics are organized along trade-guilds and only those who have successfully been 'Mustered Out' of the army at 45 are given the vote (to ensure a military efficiency within the Industrial Army by avoiding electoral squabbles among those who serve). There is no war, as Europe has also adopted a similar system, and slowly all the countries of the world are drawing together under a singular World Government. Numerous chapters of the book explore various facets of the 'Twentieth Century,' such as how book or newspaper publishing works, or the religious life of the day (apparently a nondenominational Unitarianism, conveyed in a method similar to Televangelism). The books entire outlook, however, can be simplified in a phrase spoken to its time-traveling narrator: "The broad shoulders of the nation bear now like a feather the burden the broke the backs of the people of your day."

There is plenty to disagree with in Bellamy's utopian outlook...his Socialism for instance. Even some other Socialists did not share all of Bellamy's views: William Morris wrote News From Nowhere, an opposing Utopia, in part as a response to Bellamy's glorification of the state. And Bellamy himself was not entirely able to shake off his own prejudices. He does not treat women as entire equals to men and he never gives any attention to race or ethnicity at all. The book is also bogged down by the fact that it includes a plot in order to classify itself as a novel but doesn't bother to make that plot at all interesting. There is a silly romance woven into the pages and an even sillier plot twist toward the end. Nevertheless, Looking Backward remains a radically imaginative piece of work, both in the modern day and even more so considering the political climate when it was originally published in 1887. The power of the work comes from the authors sincere belief in the value of human cooperation and in the inherent goodness of people which can be brought to fruition only in a society that encourages that goodness to manifest itself. Finally, Bellamy stands out as a talented writer. Ignoring the drippy plot, his vibrant prose makes the otherwise pedantic book come alive and keeps it readable.

A book worth checking out as one of the more creative and fanciful works of Nineteenth Century American fiction.(less)

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Jan 25, 2009 Bob rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of the books that I did not feel obliged to finish and don't feel faintly guilty, having "gotten the idea". The narrator has become displaced in time, going to sleep in 1887 Boston and waking up in 2000. Since the former year is when the novel was written, it fits into the ontological category of "the past's notion of what the future would be like" which we enjoy everywhere from H.G. Wells to William Gibson to Saarinen's TWA Terminal building ( http://farm1.static.flickr.com/174/41.....more

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Jan 27, 2013 Althea Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A utopian political tract, more interesting for its glimpse into 19th-century radical political idealism than its literary qualities.

Although largely forgotten today, 'Looking Backward' was apparently a runaway bestseller at the time of its publication, spawning dozens of social clubs devoted to improving society in ways inspired by Bellamy.

The ideas are a combination of idealistic and disconcerting.

Some of the ideas are noble and truly something to aspire to - for example, the idea that every p...more A utopian political tract, more interesting for its glimpse into 19th-century radical political idealism than its literary qualities.

Although largely forgotten today, 'Looking Backward' was apparently a runaway bestseller at the time of its publication, spawning dozens of social clubs devoted to improving society in ways inspired by Bellamy.

The ideas are a combination of idealistic and disconcerting.

Some of the ideas are noble and truly something to aspire to - for example, the idea that every person in a society has a right to share in the wealth of that society, and to live with dignity, without want. However, there's also a uniformity and social authoritarianism that many modern people may find repellent.

When Bellamy imagines a mega-store, he sees a temple-like place of fountains, marble, and a virtually unlimited selection of quality merchandise. When I think of a mega-store, I think WalMart.
Bellamy's vision depends on the belief that human beings are, at heart, naturally peaceful and cooperative, and that if people are given a good education, the opportunity to do what they're best at, and all the necessities of a comfortable life, crime and conflict will naturally disappear. Sadly, I disagree. I'm more of the opinion that people will always find an excuse for conflict, and that if everyone is on equal footing, each person will still find a way to try to rise higher than another. If private commerce is banned, black markets will arise.

Although Bellamy specifies that his utopia arises naturally from capitalism, without violent revolution, and that the bureaucratic and administrative tasks of the nation are overseen by a team who have no personal power or self-interest in the matter (no dictators in sight), there are still disturbing similarities to Nazi propaganda here. (Bellamy's vision, here, is undeniably one of a form of National Socialism - without the hatred, intolerance and bigotry that political movement came to be associated with.)

By chance, shortly after reading this book, I read a book review of a volume that sought to explain the rise of the Third Reich. I don't think the author's theories were correct. I think that reading this book, with its vision of a peaceful, united nation with a patriotic, healthy, fully participating and content citizenry, is far more explanatory of how radical ideas can capture the imagination of a people.

Still, it's refreshing, in this era of dystopias and apocalypse, to read something from an era when people widely dreamed that the future might be better, not worse, than the present day.(less)

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About Edward Bellamy

American author and Christian socialist.

His novel Looking Backward is a widely regarded work of socialist Utopian fiction and was referenced in many Marxist publications of the time.

When it was first published in 1888, its success was behind that of only Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

It inspired a less successful sequel entitled Equality that was more of a political tract t...more

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“There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support...” — 7 people liked it

“Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.” — 7 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99563.Looking_Backward?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328756883l/99563.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99563.Looking_Backward?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy[/url]

Looking Backward

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