Utopian & Dystopian Literature

One thing we know for sure about the future: it's unknown. Yet, as writers have been proving since there were writers, it can be predicted, often with a fairly high degree of accuracy. Maybe Big Brother doesn't literally stare at people in Communist countries, but in Soviet Russia 2+2 really did equal 5, at least according to Stalin's propaganda posters. And for those of us in the West, it's hard to deny that Aldous Huxley was pretty right-on, even down to the disconcerting mass consumption of soma.

Not all the predictions are accurate, obviously. Plato's Republic (thank goodness) never came to pass; it hasn't got as far as Bradbury's book burnings....yet; and we haven't been enslaved by morlocks....again, yet. But that doesn't make the novels in which these ideas are posited any less important or compelling.

Utopian (the ideal world) and dystopian (a horrible reversal of utopian) societies reflect both the way authors see things going, and the general attitudes prevalent at the time of writing. Sir Thomas More's Utopia (from which the word originated) wasn't intended to suggest such a perfect culture as he describes actually existed in the New World, but to demonstrate what the Christian humanists of his day thought such a society would look like.

There are more dystopian novels than utopian ones; perhaps this should be no surprise in a world filled with violence, anger, immorality, debauchery, and anarchy. It's hard to imagine things getting increasingly better in the face of such horrible conditions. Yet many authors have tried to envision such a turn, most of them philosophers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the most famous, positing in Emile his concept of the noble savage, and in The Social Contract man's opportunity for constructing a proper societal structure.

The books in this section aren't philosophy, however, at least not in the sense that Rousseau's works were philosophy. Orwell, Wells and Huxley were all philosophers of a sort, but they were eminently practical, reaching the masses through works that avoided technical language and embraced the conventions of fictional adventure stories.

You don't have to agree with any of these writers to enjoy their books. While some of their predictions were demonstrably (and frighteningly) on point, the point is that they were thinking and reflecting on the places their contemporary situations might lead, not that they precisely charted the course beforehand.

Yet these aren't merely time-specific volumes; each embraces the universal themes of what it means to be human, how societies ought to be run, and where true goodness can be found. The answers provided may suprise you, or at least make you wonder why things aren't as bad yet as writers like Bradbury suggested they could become.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.
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1984
Signet Classics
by George Orwell
from Signet Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.99
1984
by George Orwell
from Harcourt
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00 $11.00 (5 in stock)
Animal Farm
Signet Classics
by George Orwell
from Signet Classics
Utopian/Dystopian Literature for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.99
Anthem
by Ayn Rand
Expanded 50th Anniversary from Signet Classics
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$7.99
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
from HarperCollins
Dystopian Literature for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley, illustrated by Mara McAfee
from Easton Press
Dystopian Literature for 10th-Adult
in Leather Bound Collectible Books (Location: VIN-LEA)
Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller
from Harper & Row
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Earth Abides
by George R. Stewart
from Harper Voyager
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.99
ECL: Time Machine & Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells, illustrated by Dick Cole
from Classic Press
Science Fiction/Dystopian literature for 7th-Adult
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
from Simon and Schuster
Science Fiction/Dystopian Literature for 10th grade-adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.00
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
3rd printing, 1962 from Ballantine Books
Science Fiction/Dystopian Literature for 10th grade-adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$25.00 (1 in stock)
House of the Scorpion
by Nancy Farmer
Reprint from Atheneum
for 8th-Adult
2003 Newbery Honor Book; 2003 National Book Award for Young People's Literature
in Science Fiction (Location: FIC-SCI)
$12.99 $7.00 (1 in stock)
Looking Backward
Dover Thrift Editions
by Edward Bellamy
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.00
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
from Riverhead Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
New Atlantis and The City of the Sun: Two Classic Utopias
by Francis Bacon, Tomasso Campanella
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 17th Century Literature (Location: LIT4-17)
Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell, foreword by Thomas Pynchon
Centennial Edition from Plume Books
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell, foreword by Thomas Pynchon
from Harcourt, Brace & World
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Sophia House
by Michael D. O'Brien
from Ignatius Press
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Time Machine
by H. G. Wells
from Signet Classics
Science Fiction/Dystopian Literature for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.95
Utopia
Dover Thrift Editions
by Sir Thomas More
from Dover Publications
Utopian/Dystopian Literature for 10th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
$5.00
Utopia
by Sir Thomas More
from Cricket House Books
Utopian/Dystopian Literature for 10th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
Utopia
Penguin Classics
by Thomas More, based on the translation by Ralph Robinson and illustrated by S. Langford Jones
from Living Book Press
Utopian/Dystopian literature for 10th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)