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Looking Further Backward by Arthur Dudley Vinton
Looking Further Backward by Arthur Dudley Vinton
- GenresClassicsScience Fiction
142 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1890
About the author
Arthur Dudley Vinton
45 books2 followers(b. 1852 - d. 1906) Author and lawyer, his maternal grandfather was Oliver Hazard Perry, brother of Commodore Matthew Perry
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 27, 2022
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/looking-further-backward-by-arthur-dudley-vinton/
The framing narrative is of a lecture series given in 2023 by Won Lung Li, a Chinese professor of recent history at an American university, but in fact almost all of the story takes place in 2020. Published in 1890, it is a direct riposte to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Because America (and also incidentally France) have adopted cuddly utopian principles, the Chinese are basically able to walk in and take control with very little resistance. Julian West, the protagonist of Looking Backward, is the only person in America who knows about fighting wars, but he is doomed and his surviving papers supply Won Lung with lecturing material. There are some good bits with West and his family escaping occupied Boston on a railway handcart in the middle of the night, but otherwise it’s not a very good book; the Yellow Peril trope is out in full force, combined with Awful Warnings about the Dangers of Socialism. Mercifully short at least.
The framing narrative is of a lecture series given in 2023 by Won Lung Li, a Chinese professor of recent history at an American university, but in fact almost all of the story takes place in 2020. Published in 1890, it is a direct riposte to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Because America (and also incidentally France) have adopted cuddly utopian principles, the Chinese are basically able to walk in and take control with very little resistance. Julian West, the protagonist of Looking Backward, is the only person in America who knows about fighting wars, but he is doomed and his surviving papers supply Won Lung with lecturing material. There are some good bits with West and his family escaping occupied Boston on a railway handcart in the middle of the night, but otherwise it’s not a very good book; the Yellow Peril trope is out in full force, combined with Awful Warnings about the Dangers of Socialism. Mercifully short at least.
September 26, 2024
Is this really an official response to Looking Backward: 2000-1887? Doesn't it seem kind of silly that the future it predicts is very recent already past us? Since when did Bellamy ever have so many responses to his famous bestseller?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews