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...

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...

2000th Book Read on Goodreads!*For my 2000th book ‘read’ on GR, I present Bellamy’s vision of a socialist utopia, published in 1888. Nowhere near as narratively cushy as William Morris’s News from Nowhere, although far superior to HG Wells’s weirdly fascist and crushingly boring A Modern Utopia, Bellamy’s vision errs on the side of Christian kindness, crediting humans with the basic decency to work together to fulfil everyone’s interests, presenting a heartbreakingly plausible vision of a future...

As a historic work, this isn't without interest. As a piece of art, it reads more like a lecture from someone who can't stop pontificating. Edward Bellamy was trying to craft ideas for the perfect society, but it is hard to stomach in a post-Freud, post World War-I and -II and post-Soviet Union world. I'll take an anti-utopian novel like 1984 any day.

A book that has been stranded on the "island of forgotten classics" for far too long. Foreshadowing many of the technological advancements we take for granted this is a look back that will also provide a vantage point for looking forward as we are all caught in the ebb and flow of technoethics and technoetics.

This was another Literary Birthday challenge title, and the last one I will be able to complete for March. Edward Bellamy was born on March 26, 1850. This book was published in 1888 and according to the GR author bio was third in popularity behind Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ. Bellamy takes the Rip Van Winkle idea and cranks it up a few notches. Our hero Julian goes to sleep in Boston one night in 1887 and wakes up in a most unusual place: Boston in the year 2000. The main...

Proto-scifi utopian snoozefest 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." This is mystifying because it's basically a boring socialist tract. (For context: I am a socialist. It is frustrating to me that most socialist books suck.)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 and equalit...

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...

One reads this clunky, sci-fi novel about the socialist paradise that America would supposedly become by the year 2000 so as to retain one important idea. Socialism had many forms before the creation of the 2nd and then the 3rd international.Americans were open to the Socialism up until the 1950s when the Russians made it quite clear that they considered America to be their number one enemy. In the late nineteenth century, there was no visceral hatred towards socialists who were considered be to...

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...

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...

Started off hopeful, but ended leaving me wanting more.This is the story of Julian West, a man from the year 1887 who falls into a trance and wakes up in the year 2000. It basically provides an outline for the makings of a perfect society, which, in the novel, is exactly what is created in the year 2000. Dr. Leete is basically the spokesperson for this new society, which by the way is a very radical version of Socialism. Leete explains to Julian the industrial workforce, and all of the inner-wor...

Really fascinating.There were some things that I wish we had (like the protection from rain and the work-system) and some things that seemed less desirable, some things that Bellamy got kind of right and some that were really off. While I loved all this information about this possible, what now would be alternative present, this book is basically just info dump and there is very very little story to it, what can make the book feel longer than it is.Still, for a book that is solely about explorin...

When the popular bookshelves are filled with dystopias as far as the eye can see, sometimes it's nice to try the opposite perspective. And though most utopian works tend to age badly, Bellamy's actually seems to get better with age, because it was both incredibly far-sighted for its time and best of all, still feels like it might just be achievable.The frame story is mostly for show: our protagonist goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to a completely-changed world. The Industrial...

Boy, Bellamy was idealistic. Of course, I have the advantage of truly "Looking Backward": the year 2000, in which this book takes place, was eighteen years ago. Bellamy's 1887 predictions, therefore, seem utterly implausible and laughably optimistic, although I also offer my opinion that his blueprint for utopia is also horrendously unattractive and restricting.Even though I have the privilege of living in his future, I don't think a lot of my issues with the book depend on my "futuristic" knowl...

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.

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...

Mi gramigo* jamesboogie’s review here really captures what I found in Looking Backwards. Well, I did it on audio, so it wasn’t hard, and the narrator made the pontification smooth and educational.I’d add a couple quick notes: - Does anybody else think the main character is a weirdo? He sleeps in hidden vault he had built where he is visited evenings by a “mesmerist” so he can sleep. He’s an oblivious one-percenter who keeps a box of gold buried in his bedroom, and he falls in love a week after l...

In college, I took a class on Political Literature--a class designed to expose political and historical thoughts and feelings through literature. This would have been an excellent addition to such a class's curriculum, as I feel it is more political commentary disguised as fiction than it is fiction about politics.Looking Backward is the story of a man who goes to sleep in 1887 Boston, and wakes up in 2000 Boston. (It is fiction, remember so this kind of jump can happen.) He awakens and learns o...

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...

I started reading Edward Bellamy's classic utopian novel Looking Backward on a three-hour train ride back home. It was night, dark outside, and my eyes flitted from the screen of my e-reader to the dark void outside and back. I like to peer out at the towns the train passes so furtively, reduced by speed, distance and time of day to a few lights strewn across the landscape. When I sit in a train and look outside, I cannot help but turn into the stereotypical dreamy passenger. The reflective surf...

This book of 1887 by Edward Bellamy is the other socialist utophy together with News from Nowhere by Morris written in 1990 as a reaction to the book of Bellamy.There are differences with the book of Morris in the sense that of the Bellamy is more statalist and centralist oriented and the Morris book is more on the side of anarchism,on the other side in the Morris book there is a concern for the stetic,environement ,a love for the nature that there is not in the book of Bellamy and in this the r...

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

This is not really a book of fiction, as there’s no plot to speak of except showing the protagonist around the future. It’s really just Bellamy’s well-intentioned hope for a future utopia. It’s actually a lot like the StarTrek vision without any technology whatsoever. Of course, unlike Bellamy, we have the benefit of understanding the failure of the centralized Russian economy. We also have the benefit of knowing about the internet in general and Amazon.com specifically. And while Bellamy’s idea...

I read this book many years ago, and what I remember most about it, and one thing I loved about it, was how it made me think about what was most worthwhile in life and what was not. I found the book thought provoking, and it was fun to read also.

ENGLISH: The narrator falls in a hypnotic trance in 1887 and awakes 113 years later, in the year 2000. The Boston he discovers, which he describes in detail, is very different from the one he knew, for the 19th century industrial society in the U.S. has changed into a new advanced and Utopian society based on the nationalization of industry.Bellamy believes in the myth of indefinite progress, as is clear in his preface to this novel: The almost universal theme of the writers and orators who have...

That was really quite good, close to giving it 4 stars. I mean it's still just a utopian plan, there is a frame of story and frankly a little more than i felt was necessary but the main parts are just a description of a future socialist utopia. Nothing too groundbreaking or that i havn't read before but delivered with some style.There's a really good metaphor at the start and many interesting ideas throughout. I'm not sure why this above other utopias causes such reactions as it apparently did,

I listed this under fiction. It is also considered by some 'science fiction" but actually, there is very little of interest to the sf fan here.Basically, after 113 years sleeping, our hero wakes up in a future Boston, and the books lectures at length on Bellamy's idea of social and political utopia.I read it becase of its historical listing as an early attempt at science fiction, and found it very slow moving indeed. Quite dated; quite shallow and lots of economic and political chit chat with ve...

This might be the dumbest book I’ve ever read. I respect and understand what Bellamy was trying to do, but for mercy of the reader, don’t try to deliver something like this in a fictional setting if you’re not going to bother making your characters anything more than endlessly chattering names without agency or thought or reflection or personality, who only recite the philosophy of the writer. And don't make it fiction if you don’t have a plot or a story or action or development of some basic a

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...