Looking Backward (Dover Thrift Editions)

Want to understand history in the 21st century from a 19th century point of view? The author of this book must have stared up at the stars and looked into a crystal ball to write such an insightful essay.

I was curious about this book because it was mentioned in the newest Brad Meltzer book. It is described as the favorite book of the madman who murdered President McKinley. What I found was socialist claptrap. A privilage man pulls a Rip Van Winkle in 1887 and wakes in a socialist "paradise" in 2000. It is less of a story and more of a facile diatribe on how wonderful it would be if we were all the same. Looking backward also includes the sequal, but I am not going to waste my time reading it.

In "Looking Backward", Bellamy,
gives a compelling metaphor of the economic system of corporate greed where 99% of the countries wealth is controlled by 1%. To repeat 99% of the people enjoy 1% of the wealth where 1% of the greedy control 99%.

Bellamy's "Looking backwards ", written in 1894, advances some very powerful ideas for an alternative economic system that would be very workable with current technology and addresses the problem where 96 billion pounds of food are wasted each year while 12 million children face hunger.

... and yes the rosebush of man was indeed transplanted into that fantastic utopia delineated by Bellamy, and that land was called Russia, where the rosebush of the bog, which had lived since the beginning of time, was thenceforth dead in a space of less than 75 years.

As a novel: there are three characters. The ostensible narrator exists to listen. Dr. Leete exists to preach -- except for one chapter where an actual preacher delivers the sermon (but don't worry, he sounds just like Dr. Leete). And Dr. Leete's young, beautiful daughter exists to fall in love with the narrator. In fact, she was in love with him before she ever met him.

One chapter at the end of the novella actually does have human emotion and colorful images -- just one chapter out of dozens.

As a prediction of future material progress: failed. Bellamy posits that countries all over the world will introduce radical social reorganizations leading to unbelievable economic progress. But the actual progress shown is paltry: four channels of live music delivered over telephone lines; roll-out awnings for city days. No improvements in transportation. Very little in communication. No new fabrics, no new foods.

Dr. Leete does mention, in an aside, that healthy humans in the year 2000 usually live to 85-90 years; and the longer lifespan does figure into his economic plan. In 1900, the average lifespan of people in developed countries was 40-50 years. Even for healthy adults age 60, life expectancy in the US has roughly doubled from 1887 to 2000. So that prediction of increased lifespan and improved health is actually a radical prediction on Bellamy's part. Credit for that. But it's just one thing.

In contrast to the lack of material progress, humans have changed their nature more in 100 years of Bellamy's world than in thousands of years of history before it. No more war: no country has an army. They just decided that not having armies would be better for everybody. Similarly, no more corruption. No more greed. No drug addicts, no alcoholics. (They were plentiful in 1887 -- what happened?). No featherbedding. New Bellamy Man just doesn't do these things.

Last, on the political economy. Bellamy posits a socialist state -- there's one owner, and most workers work for the single benevolent owner. Except for writers. And magazine editors. And preachers. There's an escape valve in his single-owner socialism: any group of people can hire one of their fellows by agreeing to pay his ration costs out of their own, thus releasing him from the industrial army. But only for certain professions, such as Bellamy's own.

This book takes place in the future, an ideal socialist world in which everyone is treated the same.

This book genuinely holds up the idea of socialism to the very last page. Something that absolutely irked me about it is how even this book, written before George Orwell was already forecasting "some of us are more equal than others".

The author begins by describing a young man in the 19th century who sleeps into the future and retains his current state. He there finds a doctor who's bent on mocking his barbaric culture of the past. The doctor describes a "utopia" in which every man works, no one is exempt from the working force. Sounds fair until you read a bit further....

When an author prints a successful book, they are then exempt from service. They are excused from the working class. Even further, when you read about the politics the author deems the working class incapable of electing the President. Only the elite are capable of making that decision, which includes these successful authors. What a nice little utopia the author has dug out for himself.

Edward Bellamy wrote this novel in a time of civil unrest, at a time when the classes were fighting amongst easy other. He deemed it very possible that his ideas may be implemented. Personally I think he was being very opportunistic. People of this era were looking for new means a of social class, so Edward handed them something he knew they would see as a fair solution.

I think this book, by attempting to uphold socialism really shows why you it always inevitably fails. People are greedy and corrupted, and an all controlling system like this just invites people to take advantage of it.

If you read this novel, prepare for a sneering tone and a mockery of typical culture. Rather hypocritical of the author really, he mocks people of wanting to take advantage of situations for their personal gain, yet at the same time, that's precisely what he did with this novel.

Like most Utopias, Edward Bellamy illustrates his ideal society through a light narrative designed to both deliver his point and entertain the reader; in this case, the narrative evolves from suspense (kinda) into, of course, a love story. The tale centers around Julian West, a bourgeoisie-of-sorts from late 19th century society, whose hypnotic sleep leaves him lying peacefully until he is awoken in the year 2000 by a doctor and his family. The plot is obviously not meant to be particularly realistic, but as framework for Bellamy to build his theory upon it serves him quite well.
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The title, "Looking Backward" is derived from the dialogue between the main character and the family that found him, throughout which aspects from the "current" society of the year 2000 are contrasted with that of the past. The dialogue evolves to include Bellamy's theories on economics, production, political agendum and other less defined, though no less well-conceived, philosophies on social direction and operation. I found it most interesting that he was able to foresee the rise of corporations and their monopoly over production and distribution at a time when industrialism was at its infancy.
I could write pages upon pages about the ideas in Looking Backward, but instead I'll just point you to the text itself. As a reviewer, one is always tempted to incorporate their own bias into the review. For instance, I have read reviews of this book that dismiss it for promotion of what later became known as socialism. This is most absurd as such a narrow minded dismissal not only blames a text for the faulty implementation of a faulty system in despotic hands but ignores the intent of the author, which was to illustrate a society based upon unity and equality as opposed to the current system disunity and inequality. I have also read reviews that suggest the book to be 'incomplete' for not elaborating upon the details in which the society of 1887 transformed to the Utopia of 2000. I put forth that such a task should not and cannot be undertaken by an author whose intent is to outline their ideal society, as it is to the rest of us who would see the ideal realized that would need to undertake its practical development and application. The task of all authors is to spread ideas, not necessarily to implement them.
If you are looking for a good story to read, skip this book. The story is pretty weak and the writing is in most instances overly technical at times when simple language would suffice. What makes it the classic that it is are the ideas expounded within the text. The most admirable and practical example of such to me was his views on concerted production, where the extreme wealth of the state is achieved through the industries working together towards a single cause (the wealth of the state, of course) instead of against each other, profiteering from the collapse of their competitors. I also envy the idea, however unattainable it would seem, that since all wages are equal for all citizens, each pursues his vocation solely for the genuine love of the field.
Time and time again while reading through this text, I could not help but pause and ask myself why such a system as described by Bellamy couldn't and doesn't exist. Perhaps it is too unrealistic. Perhaps it is too idealistic. But as I like to think, perhaps it just makes too much sense for such a flawed species to accept.

This book is considered a seminal work in science fiction. Like Fry in Futurama, the narrator of Looking Backward falls asleep in Boston during the Industrial Revolution and wakes up at the turn of the millennium. How has the world changed?

This book is primarily a book of political science fiction. Bellamy, the author, had a political objective to demonstrate how a completely socialized and nationalized economy is better than unchecked competition and capitalism. His society is happier, freer, healthier, wiser, and wealthier.

His utopian ideals didn’t pan out, although as nicely described in the introduction of the version I read, “Bellamy Clubs” popped up across the U.S. and led movements to socialize electricity networks under municipal ownership.

But some of Bellamy’s vision seems to capture modern life. The advent of credit cards rather than cash, department stores under one roof with everything you could ever need, logistics systems that deliver all your items and food right to your home, and a big industrial army running the whole system. Plus, he describes a nearly on-demand radio-like entertainment system in each room of the home.

What I see is the store: it’s Prime delivery service getting what you need in hours (from clothes to electronics to groceries to restaurant meals); it’s online streaming service; the army of a half million the store employees running around huge warehouses; online, electronic payments. Maybe consolidation of our lives around giants like the store and Google is really the socialized system Bellamy envisioned.

On the surface this book published in 1888 is nothing but a small science fiction book about the future, but it doesn't take much digging to find the socialist vision of the future within. While very interesting and, yes, thought provoking, many parts of the book read very much like a political science book than a utopian novel. It is entertaining, yes, but I would not look at it as a study of human society. The book shows the government as 'allowing' things to happen, such as the evolution of small businesses to huge monopolies, while in our own history we know the government of the early 20th century fought it tooth and nail, with anti-trust laws, while the people fought the idea of monopolies, refusing to become nothing more than unfeeling consumers.
We are more than just capitalists and workmen. We are painters, dreamers and, yes, writers too!

The trouble with Edward Bellamy futuristic book, Looking Backward, is that the future he envisions happens too soon. The year 2000 has come and gone and Bellamy’s take on what life will be like in that year is nowhere near what it actually was. Moreover, the view of human nature that Bellamy presents is hopelessly idealistic. The basic plot involves a man, Julian West, who is well off and living in the year 1887, about to marry the love of his life. West has trouble sleeping and hires a hypnotist to help him fall asleep. But when he wakes up he finds he is in the year 2000 and in Boston in the home of Dr. Leete and his wife and daughter, Edith. Leete is the mouthpiece for Bellamy’s vision and shows West a world in which everything is ideal and managed by the government. There is no war, crime or other unpleasantness. Everyone works and is paid equally no matter what work they do and are happy with this arrangement. Democracy has been largely replaced by a national system of control. There is a congress but it meets only once every five years. Even routine things like cleaning and cooking are done outside the home. This system is clearly not Communism as Leete tells West that the “followers of the red flag” from the 19th century have been coopted.

By contrast, the world of 1887 is presented as one of war and labor unrest, conditions that are blamed on the inequality of the times and the self-serving mentality of people. By contrast the world of the year 2000 is not only better but people are more moral. Bellamy does display a sexist attitude when it comes to women saying that they are weaker than men and cannot do the same work as men.

West comes to love Edith and she returns his affection. He finds out, conveniently, that she is the great granddaughter of his love from 1887. At the end of the book West wakes up back in 1887 and goes to visit the family of his beloved and tries to tell them how much better the world of 2000 is, but they get angry and drive him away. The book ends with West back in the year 2000.

This book may be interesting for some as an example of utopian writing, but I found it too unrealistic to be believable.

According to Wikipedia, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy was the third-largest best-seller of its time. Uncle Tom's Cabin, the anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ben-Hur, by the former Civil War general Lew Wallace, were the only two books written in America during the 19th century with more copies sold than Bellamy's book. Socialism, thought of as a radical philosophy that caused a great disturbance in St. Louis, became a legitimate political movement after the release of Looking Backward.

The main character of the novel is Julian West, a well-bred Bostonian who fell into a long, hypnotically-induced trance to cure his insomnia. West awoke in the home of a physician, Dr. Leete. Leete (with no first name) explained to West that Rip Van Winkle was not singularly a great story by Washington Irving. West had awoken in the year 2000, 113 years after the time that he first fell asleep. A mesmerized trance enabled West to retain his age while submerged in his long rest. Mesmerism was a 19th century fad that gave the improbable scenario an aura of possibility.

Time travel is a useful literary device to compare and contrast societies in two different times. 11/22/63 by Stephen King and Jacob's Folly by Rebecca Miller are two recent novels that have employed variations of time travel. The Back to the Future movies of the 1980s also employed the device. Some other examples are mentioned in the teacher's guide that is available for free by the publisher of this book.

West first described his life as it existed during the The Age of Capitalism. In his recollections, one can detect the problems of growth prevalent in his narrative: the inequities of capitalism, the noise and decay of the cities, the strikes of labor, and even the unfairness of inheritances that create a class of wealthy people who do not contribute to the betterment of society.

The skyscrapers which are now a part of the Boston skyline had not appeared when this novel was written in 1887, so they were not imagined for the future. Julian West could recognize traces of his old home such as the Charles River and the port of Boston because tall buildings hadn't been built to block his view. The City Beautiful movement had transformed the streets below into an urban paradise, but West still recognized markers of old Boston.

Yet these physical improvements paled in comparison to the social utopia that governed the United States of America in Bellamy's vision of the future. Amalgamations of capital and its effects were the biggest problems facing the average citizen during the Age of Capitalism. These amalgamations first appeared as pools, then trusts, and finally holding corporations that acted as monopolies. Labor unions rose to put labor on an equal platform with aggregations of capital that hired employees, but the struggles between labor and management were violent, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous to the public.

The assumptions of Dr. Leete were commonly-held during the 1880s. Industry was moving toward a series of monopolies as companies merged with larger corporations. Defenders of the system explained that economies of scale often made the largest producer the lowest-cost producer.

Opponents claimed that once a company reached the stage of a monopoly, it raised its prices to a public that was held hostage. Socialists took the defenders of the system at their word regarding economies of scale, but felt that the monopoly should be owned by the people, who would not have incentive to gouge the public with price hikes because of the lack of competition. What is unnoticed in such a formula is the organization and planning by skilled, cost-conscious management that can also bring about lower costs.

Edward Bellamy agreed with concepts of socialism and wrote Looking Backward to explain to the public how such a utopian society could work. His plot is minimal and primarily a vehicle to promote social reform. A happy ending is the necessary outcome, for the reader needs to be assured that the utopian society is the best of all possible outcomes.

The novel did much to spur socialism. In the aftermath of its release, Bellamy clubs sprung up around the nation. Bellamy offered a tempting philosophical notion: that a change in the economy would spur a change in public morality - including the personal morality of each citizen.

Socialism never came to pass in America but it did occur in Eastern Europe. When the experiment ended in 1989, experts noted that socialist countries were technologically backward upon inspection of the industrial facilities of those countries. Ironically, the slave labor system was also resistant to innovation. Both systems were unable to create incentives that promoted the right amount of innovation.

Socialist concepts did affect unbridled capitalism, which progressives sought to manage around the turn to the 20th century. The New Deal of the 1930s and Great Society in the 1960s added the socialist component of the Welfare State to capitalism that the Reagan counterrevolution of the 1980s reduced, but failed to erase.

This paperback version of Looking Backward contains a nine-page introduction by Walter James Miller, most of which is a biography of Edward Bellamy. The impact of the novel is also discussed, focusing on the application of Bellamy principles to Populism and the New Deal. The back of the book contains a web address to a free teacher's guide that might not be so bad if Leete was not misspelled 'leetee' so many times. You don't have to buy the book to see the guide. Search for 'Looking Backward Teacher's Guide on the internet.

Given that there are study guides available for free on the internet and a good outline of this book on Wikipedia, the extras may not be necessary. Looking Backward is available for free on Project Gutenberg. The version of the book in the public domain contains a shorter introduction by Heywood Broun instead of the introduction by Miller. Broun wrote some pretty good baseball stories, including a great article about Game Two of the 1923 World Series that began with the line 'The Ruth is mighty and shall prevail.'

The trouble with Edward Bellamy futuristic book, Looking Backward, is that the future he envisions happens too soon. The year 2000 has come and gone and Bellamy’s take on what life will be like in that year is nowhere near what it actually was. Moreover, the view of human nature that Bellamy presents is hopelessly idealistic. The basic plot involves a man, Julian West, who is well off and living in the year 1887, about to marry the love of his life. West has trouble sleeping and hires a hypnotist to help him fall asleep. But when he wakes up he finds he is in the year 2000 and in Boston in the home of Dr. Leete and his wife and daughter, Edith. Leete is the mouthpiece for Bellamy’s vision and shows West a world in which everything is ideal and managed by the government. There is no war, crime or other unpleasantness. Everyone works and is paid equally no matter what work they do and are happy with this arrangement. Democracy has been largely replaced by a national system of control. There is a congress but it meets only once every five years. Even routine things like cleaning and cooking are done outside the home. This system is clearly not Communism as Leete tells West that the “followers of the red flag” from the 19th century have been coopted.

By contrast, the world of 1887 is presented as one of war and labor unrest, conditions that are blamed on the inequality of the times and the self-serving mentality of people. By contrast the world of the year 2000 is not only better but people are more moral. Bellamy does display a sexist attitude when it comes to women saying that they are weaker than men and cannot do the same work as men.

West comes to love Edith and she returns his affection. He finds out, conveniently, that she is the great granddaughter of his love from 1887. At the end of the book West wakes up back in 1887 and goes to visit the family of his beloved and tries to tell them how much better the world of 2000 is, but they get angry and drive him away. The book ends with West back in the year 2000.

This book may be interesting for some as an example of utopian writing, but I found it too unrealistic to be believable.

According to Wikipedia, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy was the third-largest best-seller of its time. Uncle Tom's Cabin, the anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ben-Hur, by the former Civil War general Lew Wallace, were the only two books written in America during the 19th century with more copies sold than Bellamy's book. Socialism, thought of as a radical philosophy that caused a great disturbance in St. Louis, became a legitimate political movement after the release of Looking Backward.

The main character of the novel is Julian West, a well-bred Bostonian who fell into a long, hypnotically-induced trance to cure his insomnia. West awoke in the home of a physician, Dr. Leete. Leete (with no first name) explained to West that Rip Van Winkle was not singularly a great story by Washington Irving. West had awoken in the year 2000, 113 years after the time that he first fell asleep. A mesmerized trance enabled West to retain his age while submerged in his long rest. Mesmerism was a 19th century fad that gave the improbable scenario an aura of possibility.

Time travel is a useful literary device to compare and contrast societies in two different times. 11/22/63 by Stephen King and Jacob's Folly by Rebecca Miller are two recent novels that have employed variations of time travel. The Back to the Future movies of the 1980s also employed the device. Some other examples are mentioned in the teacher's guide that is available for free by the publisher of this book.

West first described his life as it existed during the The Age of Capitalism. In his recollections, one can detect the problems of growth prevalent in his narrative: the inequities of capitalism, the noise and decay of the cities, the strikes of labor, and even the unfairness of inheritances that create a class of wealthy people who do not contribute to the betterment of society.

The skyscrapers which are now a part of the Boston skyline had not appeared when this novel was written in 1887, so they were not imagined for the future. Julian West could recognize traces of his old home such as the Charles River and the port of Boston because tall buildings hadn't been built to block his view. The City Beautiful movement had transformed the streets below into an urban paradise, but West still recognized markers of old Boston.

Yet these physical improvements paled in comparison to the social utopia that governed the United States of America in Bellamy's vision of the future. Amalgamations of capital and its effects were the biggest problems facing the average citizen during the Age of Capitalism. These amalgamations first appeared as pools, then trusts, and finally holding corporations that acted as monopolies. Labor unions rose to put labor on an equal platform with aggregations of capital that hired employees, but the struggles between labor and management were violent, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous to the public.

The assumptions of Dr. Leete were commonly-held during the 1880s. Industry was moving toward a series of monopolies as companies merged with larger corporations. Defenders of the system explained that economies of scale often made the largest producer the lowest-cost producer.

Opponents claimed that once a company reached the stage of a monopoly, it raised its prices to a public that was held hostage. Socialists took the defenders of the system at their word regarding economies of scale, but felt that the monopoly should be owned by the people, who would not have incentive to gouge the public with price hikes because of the lack of competition. What is unnoticed in such a formula is the organization and planning by skilled, cost-conscious management that can also bring about lower costs.

Edward Bellamy agreed with concepts of socialism and wrote Looking Backward to explain to the public how such a utopian society could work. His plot is minimal and primarily a vehicle to promote social reform. A happy ending is the necessary outcome, for the reader needs to be assured that the utopian society is the best of all possible outcomes.

The novel did much to spur socialism. In the aftermath of its release, Bellamy clubs sprung up around the nation. Bellamy offered a tempting philosophical notion: that a change in the economy would spur a change in public morality - including the personal morality of each citizen.

Socialism never came to pass in America but it did occur in Eastern Europe. When the experiment ended in 1989, experts noted that socialist countries were technologically backward upon inspection of the industrial facilities of those countries. Ironically, the slave labor system was also resistant to innovation. Both systems were unable to create incentives that promoted the right amount of innovation.

Socialist concepts did affect unbridled capitalism, which progressives sought to manage around the turn to the 20th century. The New Deal of the 1930s and Great Society in the 1960s added the socialist component of the Welfare State to capitalism that the Reagan counterrevolution of the 1980s reduced, but failed to erase.

This paperback version of Looking Backward contains a nine-page introduction by Walter James Miller, most of which is a biography of Edward Bellamy. The impact of the novel is also discussed, focusing on the application of Bellamy principles to Populism and the New Deal. The back of the book contains a web address to a free teacher's guide that might not be so bad if Leete was not misspelled 'leetee' so many times. You don't have to buy the book to see the guide. Search for 'Looking Backward Teacher's Guide on the internet.

Given that there are study guides available for free on the internet and a good outline of this book on Wikipedia, the extras may not be necessary. Looking Backward is available for free on Project Gutenberg. The version of the book in the public domain contains a shorter introduction by Heywood Broun instead of the introduction by Miller. Broun wrote some pretty good baseball stories, including a great article about Game Two of the 1923 World Series that began with the line 'The Ruth is mighty and shall prevail.'

I happened across this book while reading "the politically incorrect guide to the 60's".

It was noted as a utopian fantasy where the government solves all problems, spreads the wealth around, and all corporations and capitalists are evil.

Classic Marxism and typical liberal fantasy!

Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward 2000-1887" remains the most successful and influential utopian novel written by an American writer mainly because the competition consists mostly of dystopian works, from Jack London's "The Iron Heel" to Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," or science fiction works like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed." Still, I do not mean to give the impression that Bellamy's 1888 novel gets this honor by default. Magazine covers in 1984 were devoted to judging the track record of George Orwell's dystopian classic and I would argue that Bellamy deserves the same sort of consideration now that we have reached the 21st century. I certainly intend to use him to that end in my upcoming Utopian Images class.
At the end of the 19th century Bellamy creates a picture of a wonderful future society. Bellamy's protagonist is Julian West, a young aristocratic Bostonian who falls into a deep sleep while under a hypnotic trance in 1887 and ends up waking up in the year 2000 (hence the novel's sub-title). Finding himself a century in the future in the home of Doctor Leete, West is introduced to an amazing society, which is consistently contrasted with the time from which he has come. As much as this is a prediction of a future utopia, it is also a scathing attack on the ills of American life heading into the previous turn of the century. Bellamy's sympathies are clearly with the progressives of that period.
"Looking Backward" does not have a narrative structure per se. Instead West is shown the wonders of Boston in the year 2000, with his hosts explaining the rationale behind the grand civic improvements. For example, he discovers that every body is happy and no one is either rich or poor, all because equality has been achieved. Industry has been nationalized, which has increased efficiency because it has eliminated wasteful competition. This is a world with no need of money, but every citizen has a sort of credit card that allows them to make individual purchases, although everyone has the same montly allowance. In Bellamy's world is so ideal that it does not have any police, a military, any lawyers, or, best of all, any salesmen. Education is so valued that it continues until students reach the age of 21, at which point all citizens enter the work force, where they will stay until the age of 45. Men and women are compensated equally, but there are some distinctions between job on the basis of gender, and pregnancy and motherhood are taken into account.
Bellamy was living during the start of the Industrial Revolution, and like Francis Bacon and Tomasso Campanella who wrote during the height of the Age of Reason, he sees science and human ingenuity as being what will solve all of humanity's problems. He does not get into too many details regarding the comforts of modern living in the future, but there are several telling predictions (e.g., something very much like radio). However, it is clear that Bellamy is writing primarily to talk about economics and sociology, especially because he always compares his idealized future with the problems of his own time.
Obviously Bellamy's critique of the late 19th century will be of less interest to today's students that his various predictions on the both the future and an ideal world, unless they are specifically studying the American industrial revolution. But the latter two are enough to make "Looking Backward" deserve to be included in a current curriculum and I am looking foward to how well my students think Bellamy predicted the world in which we now find ourselves living. This particular edition, while not a Norton Critical Edition, does have a nice selection of additional readings in the back consisting of some of Bellamy's other writings as well as contemporary works by writers of other utopias and social commentaries such as William Morris, Charlotte Perkins, Henry Lloyd George, and William Dean Howells. All of these appendices provide a context for Bellamy's novel in terms of late 19th-century utopianism.

The closest thing this book resembles are those tedious monologues that you have in sci-fi movies where the future or alien society is explained to the ignorant protagonist. Imagine one of those monologues extended to novel length and you have this book. Nevertheless, it is an important book for two reasons. First it was a vision for many of the Progressives and Socialists of the day so it is helpful to see the motivational images held by people of that day. Second, it demonstrates the limits of extrapolating trends too far. The use of telephones to send music to homes on a set schedule and the network of pneumatic tubes crisscrossing the city so that goods can be sent from warehouses to individual homes are the obvious examples. The less obvious is the assumption that the centralization and standardization aspects of the Industrial Revolution would proceed until all was unified in one organizational entity. Certainly that was tried in several places but it never worked. Nature doesn't like stasis.

The main character, Julian West, wakes up in the year 2000, falls in love and views all the improvements made in 113 years: crime, poverty, and warfare have been eliminated; great cultural strides have been made; and a system of state capitalism has evolved in place of economic chaos.

Like any book written long ago, it's hard to not want to compare the description of our time, and the reality. Some things are dead on, like cultural values, and others...well, we have had economic chaos, we see that our government is now the main owner of the banks and General Motors, and that what some call socialism is coming or is it a re-vision of capitalism? In any event, or depending on your view, you are going to see many of Bellamy's predictions ring true, for good or for ill, depending on your point of view.

There is a lot of thought in this book, the ideas expressed are well thought out, and worthy of reading every ten years to see the progress way from or toward what Bellamy predicted.

Lastly, the book is a very good read, thought provoking and one you will read a few times.

Equality: Utopian Classic!

Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward 2000-1887" remains the most successful and influential utopian novel written by an American writer mainly because the competition consists mostly of dystopian works, from Jack London's "The Iron Heel" to Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," or science fiction works like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed." Still, I do not mean to give the impression that Bellamy's 1888 novel gets this honor by default. Magazine covers in 1984 were devoted to judging the track record of George Orwell's dystopian classic and I would argue that Bellamy deserves the same sort of consideration now that we have reached the 21st century. I certainly intend to use him to that end in my upcoming Utopian Images class.
At the end of the 19th century Bellamy creates a picture of a wonderful future society. Bellamy's protagonist is Julian West, a young aristocratic Bostonian who falls into a deep sleep while under a hypnotic trance in 1887 and ends up waking up in the year 2000 (hence the novel's sub-title). Finding himself a century in the future in the home of Doctor Leete, West is introduced to an amazing society, which is consistently contrasted with the time from which he has come. As much as this is a prediction of a future utopia, it is also a scathing attack on the ills of American life heading into the previous turn of the century. Bellamy's sympathies are clearly with the progressives of that period.
"Looking Backward" does not have a narrative structure per se. Instead West is shown the wonders of Boston in the year 2000, with his hosts explaining the rationale behind the grand civic improvements. For example, he discovers that every body is happy and no one is either rich or poor, all because equality has been achieved. Industry has been nationalized, which has increased efficiency because it has eliminated wasteful competition. This is a world with no need of money, but every citizen has a sort of credit card that allows them to make individual purchases, although everyone has the same montly allowance. In Bellamy's world is so ideal that it does not have any police, a military, any lawyers, or, best of all, any salesmen. Education is so valued that it continues until students reach the age of 21, at which point all citizens enter the work force, where they will stay until the age of 45. Men and women are compensated equally, but there are some distinctions between job on the basis of gender, and pregnancy and motherhood are taken into account.
Bellamy was living during the start of the Industrial Revolution, and like Francis Bacon and Tomasso Campanella who wrote during the height of the Age of Reason, he sees science and human ingenuity as being what will solve all of humanity's problems. He does not get into too many details regarding the comforts of modern living in the future, but there are several telling predictions (e.g., something very much like radio). However, it is clear that Bellamy is writing primarily to talk about economics and sociology, especially because he always compares his idealized future with the problems of his own time.
Obviously Bellamy's critique of the late 19th century will be of less interest to today's students that his various predictions on the both the future and an ideal world, unless they are specifically studying the American industrial revolution. But the latter two are enough to make "Looking Backward" deserve to be included in a current curriculum and I am looking foward to how well my students think Bellamy predicted the world in which we now find ourselves living. This particular edition, while not a Norton Critical Edition, does have a nice selection of additional readings in the back consisting of some of Bellamy's other writings as well as contemporary works by writers of other utopias and social commentaries such as William Morris, Charlotte Perkins, Henry Lloyd George, and William Dean Howells. All of these appendices provide a context for Bellamy's novel in terms of late 19th-century utopianism.

Julian West, a young Bostonian, falls asleep in the year 1887 and wakes up in the Boston of 2000. He finds that Boston and even the whole world have been transformed to a great utopian society. A man by the name of Doctor Leete along with his wife (Mrs. Leete) and daughter (Edith Leete) take care of West in adjusting him to life in the year 2000.
The story itself turns out to be more of a distraction to the main point of the book, which is to explain the economic and social workings of the utopia found in 2000. Everybody is now paid equally for their work and no work is considered menial. Rather than working for individual companies, everybody works in what the author calls the "Industrial Army."
To keep everybody contented with their lot, measures are taken. For example, everybody wakes up every day to some music that rouses them to feel great about the greater cause they work for. The city streets are clean and there is no crime. Things like this make the book, for me at least, entirely creepy.
Unfortunately, the status of women in the book is not a whole lot better than it was in the 1880's. Women still leave the room when men begin talking politics. In addition, people have a tendency to talk in the book like they did, apparently, in the 1880's: with a disposition towards long-winded speech. As a result, the book has a tendency to drag on at times.
Since the book was written in the late 1800's, it is understandable that the author has no history of socialism to look back on, much less the failed experiment called the Soviet Union. Despite that, it is enlightening to see the goal of Socialist thinking play out in the story of "Looking Backward."
The introduction in the Penguin Classics version is well done and gives the reader a good background before reading the book.

** spoiler alert ** 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 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 would have enjoyed this book more if there was an actual storyline somewhere other than at the very beginning and very end of the book.

Changes That Have Happened:
*artificial lighting
*absence of chimneys and smoke for heating
*"credit cards"
*programs for listening to music live ... possibly internet since it's by telephone connection
*doctors may only practice if they've passed medical school
*radio alarm clock
*women in the work place
*church by phone connection (internet?)

Changes That Haven't Happened:
*the rise of monopolies choked out small businesses finally and finally gave rise to one company that owned everything (without any bloody revolution because the people all wanted it)
*governments aren't allowed to have enough power to use for maleficent causes
*Harder jobs have fewer hours and easier jobs have more hours to make it so that there is someone who wants to do every job
*every person is a common laborer during the first 3 years of their work service
*there is no buying nor selling
*there are no banks
*everyone has the same salary
*"the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave"
*free immigration because one country doesn't have to feed and clothe the person anymore and the other gets a free worker
*waterproof enclosed corridor appears during rainstorms for going out without an umbrella
*retirement at age 45
*free education up to age 21 (about grade 18)

From what I hear, one of the first organizations of so many radical ideas into one place. Many of the ideas are clever, and there are a few that I had never heard before, some that actually have the illusion of being plausible, until I give myself a reality check. I don't blame Bellamy for not knowing what would happen with many of his socialistic ideas, I blame him for not thinking. Complaints: 1: Apparently the improvement of working standards have eliminated all hate and crime. What!? 2: With equal reward for work in every job (except in the case authors), people are expected to be more motivated for honor's sake. That sure has worked well in the past. (rolls eyes). 3: The characters are nothing but vessels to transmit Bellamy's ideas. The main character awakens after a century long sleep with everyone he ever knew or cared about dead, and after a moment of shock, says 'hey, let's go find out how the new social system works, and spends the rest of the book doing just that. I realize that this was probably the most effective way Bellamy could find to convey his ideas, but if utopian novel were presented in this format today, regardless of the ideas put forth, I think it would be called a piece of trash. Out of respect for history and some of the good ideas in this book I will give it 3 stars.

Although this novel lies nearly forgotten today, when it was first released in the late 19th century, its impact on society and the imagination (and expectations) of that society were so immense as to be immeasurable. This book did more than strike a chord of hope in a population craving better times and trusting in humankind's capacity to make things right, it created a sensation. Clubs were formed in dozens of cities, which hailed Bellamy as a hero and prophet, and Looking Backward was quite simply embraced by millions as prophecy and a blueprint for what was certain to come. It all sounded so good, didn't it? The year 2000 would arrive upon a world at peace, where everyone had sufficient food, had dignity, where crime was heeled, where equality was a reality. It was, in short, both a utopia and a realization of the fantasies of Karl Marx. In fact, today this book seems both impossibly naïve and touchingly---humanistically---idealistic. Communism was tried in the decades after Bellamy's death and the 20th century result was nothing like what the 19th century Bellamy suggested it would be. Instead of equality and liberation, it brought a new species of class stratification and suffocating enslavement to nearly a quarter of the globe. Looking Backward is neither a great novel nor a bad one. In retrospect it lacks the importance which in its early years it seemed destined to have. Today Looking Backward is an interesting read, especially when the context of its creation is considered, and we with perfect hindsight can know how flawed its fantasy of an Eden-like worker's tomorrow was.

This book is bad. The socialist Utopia taken to new heights, socialist USA. I knew this was a book highlighting the greatness of communal society, it was worse than most because it tries to paint the America of the past with a Marxist brush. It attempts to place liberty into a socialist utopia where, even in this complete work of fiction, it can't live. There is nothing particularly interesting or new here. Stick to the classics if u are amused by the socialist ideology.

Other reviews have described the plot, so I won't spend much time on it. A man, Julian West, goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds a socialist utopia.
At first, the book is quite interesting. Bellamy does a good job of capturing the protagonist's surpise and confusion at the new world he discovers. The fact that Edith Leete looks like his fiance back in 1887 Boston is a neat twist. The socialist state the author describes is appealing to me, and as someone who believes that socialism can work, I found it thought provoking.
The problem is, there is not enough story or character development here. Bellamy's ideas aren't really suited to the fictional form. He'd have been better off to write a solely political tract. Because the author can't seem to decide if he wants to write a novel or a political essay, both the narrative and the politics are oversimplified, and given short shrift. The introduction by Cecilia Titchi (pardon my spelling), was excellent. In fact, the book fails to live up to it. If you know nothing about socialism, this book my enlighten you as to the philosophy. If it is an option for a political science class, it would be a good pick because it is easy and quick reading. Otherwise, I wouldn't rush to read it.

This "novel" is an excellent description of socialism at its best (written, incidentally, decades before Stalin or the USSR). The story is pretty irrelevant, consisting of your basic heterosexual narrative thrown in simply for the purposes of getting published, I imagine. The ideas about what socialism would look like are presented almost entirely as dialogue in the form of explanations to a knowledge-hungry gentleman who has been in a hypnosis-induced comma for a hundred years, and awakes to find himself in a futuristic utopia.
It's interesting to note that Bellamy wrote a sequel to this book (long out-of-print) that addresses the problems with his socialist vision. There is dissent in this new world, and Bellamy describes an alternative anarchist society rising on the fringes to address the lack of freedom in his socialist model.

On one hand, this book might be called a socialist utopian, however, I'm not convinced that a socialist would feel that way. I am a libertarian, and I still found this book very believable and interesting.

Bellamy did a wonderful job of showing how Socialism is supposed to be, however I am still not convinced it could ever happen, he does a good job outlining some of the faults in our "free market" system, but then again, I'm not sure we live in a real free market system. Anyway, this is not a review of America, but of the book, and I feel it's a must-read for those interested in philosophy, sociology, politics, and utopian concepts.

"Looking Backward" is as much a product of its time as it is a victim of its age. This novel will strike most readers as remarkably unnovelistic: there isn't much of a plot after its opening scene, in which a Rip Van Winkle-like hero is hypnotized into a deep slumber in a crypt-like room during the Gilded Age and wakes up 113 years later to a dramatically changed Boston. In the closing chapters there's a feeble attempt at a revelation or two, and (of course) a love interest, to give the book some semblance of a storyline, but I can't imagine the reader who wouldn't anticipate at the outset the "twists" at the end.

Although Bellamy's protagonist, Julian West, describes a few prescient inventions (music transmitted via telephone, debit cards) and is taken on a tour of some nearby buildings (a cooperative market that resembles a warehouse club), he mostly listens to others talk--and talk and talk and talk--about this not-so-brave new world, its impeccably enlightened population, and their condescending horror of Victorian barbarianism. Contemporary writers like Dickens or Wells or Twain or Zola would have had such a character wander through this miraculously changed landscape, experience various adventures, and encounter firsthand a delightful assortment of people. Granted, in the hands of these more literary authors, the landscape would have been more likely to turn dystopian--which reveals the limits of utopian fiction, I suppose. (There's a reason most readers prefer "The Inferno" over "Paradiso.")

And so we have clunky prose like the following excerpts:

"In the first place, you must understand that this system of preferment given the more efficient workers over the less so, in no way contravenes the fundamental idea of our social system, that all who do their best are equally deserving, whether that best be great or small."

"Women are a very happy race nowadays, as compared with what they ever were before in the world's history, and their power of giving happiness to men has been of course increased in proportion."

"Overproduction in special lines, which was the great hobgoblin of your day, is impossible now, for by the connection between distribution and production supply is geared to demand like an engine to the governor which regulates its speed."

Bellamy's futureworld is more laughably naïve than justifiably optimistic (and readers will doubtless agree regardless of their personal political views). For example, in just a few sentences he proposes how we can create a model league of nations that will insure international harmony: "The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by a loose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An international council regulates the mutual intercourse and commerce of the members of the union and their joint policy toward the more backward races, which are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions." Now why didn't we think of that?

Bellamy engages in a lot of such wand waving, and he benefits from the fact that he can imagine that people in the year 2000 will behave like cyborgs rather than human beings. The main reason to read Bellamy's novel, then, is as an historical artifact; it was one of the best-selling books written by an American in the nineteenth century and its influence cannot be underestimated. If anything, the flatness of "Looking Backward" as a work of fiction reveals among his contemporary readers an almost-admirable hopefulness for the predestined, peacefully accomplished perfection of the human species within the span of a few decades--a Pollyannaish stance that no mature modern-day person would dare entertain.

This is extremely slow reading but I really like it as a contrast to books like 1984 and Atlas Shrugged because it shows socialism as utopian. Really my main complaint is that he is a huge dick when explaining how women are naturally inferior and weaker than men and he never tries to defend his own time period. 2015 isn't perfect but I like to think if I woke up 150 years in the future I would have some pride in my own time period and the accomplishments of my generation.

"Looking Backward" is considered a classic of its type: Utopian literature, which was popular from the sixteenth century into the beginning of the twentieth. But of course, the vast majority of lives were lived in desperation then, and any escape into a better world was well received. Bellamy was 31 when this book was published. As the narrator, he relates his experience of being put into a hypnotic trance as a sleeping aid in 1887 only to be awakened 113 years later, sound of body and mind just as he was when he went to sleep. But the world has changed to a completely socialistic system. Bellamy goes into interminable explanations of how the new world operates. His characters go into long winded, somewhat repetitive, explanations of all phases of this new order. These tirades become brain numbing in their length and use of archaic words. I believe it would have been much easier to take if he had made his explanations through dialogues instead of monologues. And then his character goes out into the world of 2000 Boston. But, what does he see that's new, different, and exciting? We never find out, because he doesn't tell us. In fact, the only new inventions he describes in the entire book are water fountains whose spray works as airconditioners in buildings, awnings hanging over the entire street to keep out rain, pasteboard credit cards, and music and sermons piped into the home through telephone wires. Too bad he didn't talk with some creative visionaries about what the world might be like in the year 2000, and incorporate some of those concepts in his tale. He says nothing about changes in fashions, transportation, or any other aspect of his new surroundings. And there is a glaring error in his utopian world: He does not take into account human nature. He glosses this over by claiming that the new socialist order was so successful, that all humans immediately fell into step and laziness, jealousy and greed are no more. As if that would happen. There is one thought in the entire book I found illuminating. Paraphrasing here: Credit can be compared with nothing else but the plight of a man building a house with dynamite for mortar. With that, I agree.

Of all the pictures fun to imagine for the student of socialisms and utopias, American and otherwise, is to visualize a young Aldous Huxley or George Orwell sitting down near their respective public school fire places, during a cold and clammy English afternoon, and reading Looking Backwards. It is very easy for the reader to see Huxley and Orwell, if they did in fact read Bellamy's rather quaint vision of utopia, reflecting to them selves as they wrote their dystopic masterpieces, A Brave New World and 1984, respectively, "Alright. But what if...?"

Just like Huxley's and Orwell's works, Edward Bellamy is reacting to the horrors of his age. Violent confrontations between labor and capital in every corner of the United States were all the rage, and strikes before the age of enforced collective bargaining or binding arbitration were no joke. Imperialist wars in every corner of the world were threatening a world wide war--seemingly every other year. There were rumblings of an international socialist movement that was yearly gaining strength in Europe in spite of serious legal restrictions--while Bellamy was in University in Germany, he would have had a difficult time avoiding knowledge of the imprisonment of SPD leaders August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht as well as the banning of the Party by von Bismarck's government. What most likely struck the most horror into Bellamy, though, was the absolute wretchedness of the slums that so many Americans were trying to survive in, and the inability of anyone to even try to create a way out of it that can not in some way be traced back to self-interest, greed or outright violence.

Looking Backward is an attempt to imagine a world where poverty and ignorance are abolished in the sentimental tradition of Charles Dickens--hero of Bellamy and the novel's protagonist Julian West--coupled with a truly novel bureaucratic technocracy. It was at least in part the influence of Bellamy's idealism that Leon Trotsky found most loathsome in American socialism, whether he knew it or not, when he unforgettably called the New York Socialist Party leader, Morris Hillquit "the ideal Socialist leader for successful dentists." Marx would likely have written off Bellamy using the language that Julian West uses to describe the Mesmerist, Dr. Pillsbury, who puts him into a one hundred thirteen year catatonic--a mere quack. What both Trotsky and Marx would have grudgingly realized on reading this book is that Bellamy was one of the few people in America in 1887--aside from a handful of socialists, anarchists, and union-syndicalists--who was openly hoping for a day when human beings would leave the realm of necessity and enter the realm of freedom.

The world which Julian West enters at the close of the twentieth century, when entreated by Dr. Leete to rouse him self, is a radically altered one. As Rip Van Winkle woke up in the Catskills to find that he no longer owed his allegiance to a King and at first finds that this is a truly bewildering situation, West finds a world even more bewildering to a Boston Brahmin. Complete and total state ownership of all means of production had been achieved during his long sleep, but even more shocking was that the United States was no longer a country suffering from any social ills. Cooperation reigned in the place of the pecuniary interests of individuals. The mentality of dog eat dog, which bred both ridiculous ostentation and indefensible poverty, had simply vanished leaving in its place a world of light labor, high culture, and nearly universal contentment. The state is run by disinterested pensioners--yes, Bellamy believes such a political animal would exist--in such a way as to ensure that the profit motive does not exist, and all that men, and women, truly compete for is glory. All work to the benefit of this cooperative commonwealth to the best of their ability and equality in the most literal terms. This is not Julian West's Boston.

What becomes apparent to the reader traveling with Julian in this new world is that in many ways Julian has not left the close of the nineteenth century. Boston at the close of the twentieth century, in spite of the technological revolutions and complete reordering of the state and economy, is very much the same for Julian West. He enjoys the highest of high culture through the intricate wall card telephone system of his acoustically treated room; drinks fine wine and smokes great cigars; at communal kitchens all eat cuisine that only the leisured rich could have afforded a century before. The blessings of civilization are enjoyed by all alike to the point that where, affectively, all have become members of a universally leisured single class. The impoverished and the working classes of America, seemingly, had nothing to lose but their poverty, ignorance, and despair. The truly leisured class had, seemingly, only their haughtiness and arrogance to lose. This is where some of my troubles with Edward Bellamy begin, and where some of his own prejudices become apparent.

Bellamy identifies the world in his Boston as having been broken down into truly distinct peoples. As he puts it at the opening of his work, America was organized upon "the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays, of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant." The ignorance and poverty that so horrified Bellamy was not the only thing about the poor that seems to have been truly their own seems to have died with them.

In a truly disturbing way, any notion of how Boston, and America, changed between 1850 and 1887, escapes Bellamy's consciousness. The "labor question" has been solved through nationalization and making all people work, in one capacity or other, if they want to have anything other than bread, water and a prison cell. What have happened to the Babel of ethnics, the massive networks of parochial organizations, ethnic clubs and sport organizations that were the wellsprings of life for so many Irish and Irish Americans? There is no evidence in the improved Boston of the late twentieth century of anything other type of respectability than Bourgeoisie Protestant respectability. The people of this appallingly genteel world may very have only the variety of one of their singular stores, which have absolutely no variety in products. The twenty-first century reader is left with the truly weird possibility that Julian West and Dr. Leete, after having exhausted the topic of how much better the present is than the past, will have nothing left to talk about but yachting and literature--what with conflict being abolished.

The transplanting of Victorian notions of how the world should be run is nowhere more apparent, and more disturbing for its implications, than when West and Leete speak about what portions of the world are organized on the system that America is organized upon. As Dr. Leete explains to West how international relations work in this era, he states:

"[T]he great nations of Europe as well as Australia, Mexico and parts of South America, are now organized industrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of the evolution. The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by a loose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An international council regulates the mutual intercourse commerce of the members of the union and their joint policy toward the more backward races, which are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions."

The white man's burden and civilizing mission does not go the way of the self-interest in idyllic Boston of the future, and an idealist as deeply committed to social justice as Bellamy could not conceive, even in fiction, of any group outside of the boundaries of western society having achieved the level of sophistication that they could live in a classless society. One has to wonder what the old Confederate states would finally have looked like, and whether old rebels and unionists shook hands across a bloody chasm while educating American blacks up to civilization. Whatever, Bellamy thinks about race in America, and how West would have thought about it--the only black we see in this book is the faithful body servant of West in the nineteenth century, one Sawyer, and nothing of consequence comes out of his mouth--we can easily surmise that his utopia was close to being for whites only.

Though Bellamy's idealism reads as totally genuine, Looking Backward has some very vital imagination lacking in it. Bellamy has his cooperative commonwealth based upon the principle that all work which serves the common good is equally important, but Bellamy finds it necessary to have West paling around with Leete, a retired physician. In a world where leisure and not labor is the rule, and where the masses are washed and wholly civilized by the exacting standards of an upper class education lasting until at least the twenty-first year, why was it necessary to have Leete be a someone that would be a portrait bourgeoisie respectability? The laboring intellectual, of astute and subtle brilliance with the gnarled hands of a quarter century of hard labor, is the glorious possibility of this world which Bellamy creates for the reader but never actually realizes. Though slightly saddening, this fact probably made the book more readable to the members of America's upper class, and possibly even more plausible to them.

From the vantage of the twenty-first century, Bellamy has an ability to appear hopelessly ridiculous. He could not have known how collectivism would lead to mass murder on a colossal scale in Europe and Asia in the Twentieth century--though he would not have been surprised how much of it was done by men and women who looked on the red flag as their own. Nor could he have foreseen how the "backwards races" of the world would struggle for their own freedom in the second half the twentieth century, and have several become great powers in their own right by its close. Radio, motion pictures, television, digitized recording devices, the internet, air travel and the hydrogen bomb attached to an intercontinental ballistic missile probably never entered his imagination. He should not, though, be faulted for this. His future was one infinitely brighter than the one the world suffered through, as the nations of the world gorged themselves on the most murderous wars and massacres in mankind's history. For all the novels faults and short comings, it is a profound piece of republican idealism, premised on the very American belief that people coming together can actually change lives.

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_.

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, is a vision of a utopian Boston of the year 2000 seen in the eyes of the fictional, nineteenth century Bostonian, Julian West. Having fallen asleep for 113 years Mr. West is awakened by the Leetes family. Over the course of the next several days he discovers a multitude of changes that have occurred during his long slumber. Most importantly or most overarchingly is the idea of social change that has occurred. While many other authors' ideas of the future have involved images of great technological change, they have not demonstrated an adaptation of human behavioral change. In Bellamy's eyes however, there are some technological innovations but the primary changes occur in the areas of economics that leads to dramatic changes in the human condition. It seems to be a world in which, once everyone decided not to fight over money any longer, then people were capable of getting along. Public service and public caring for one another is the norm. In the USA of Bellamy's 2000, the government is a centralized state with the military as the primary employer. Bellamy refers to it as a corporate state and the industrialized army. In his world military and service go hand in hand. In his exploration Bellamy addresses many issues that would be of concern to not only his readers but to readers to this day. Obviously there is the economic foundation of both the nineteenth and the imaginary twentieth century of the book. This leads directly to the issues of labor. Issues of international economics, law and prison all come up in West's exploration of his newly discovered world. Again each of these issues is ultimately related and hence resolved through economics. Women's equality remains an unresolved although tremendously improved issue (an understatement). Women's issues are in some ways resolved because they are no longer the unpaid domestics that they were in Bellamy's day. There is less need for lawyers and understanding the law because things have been resolved with economics so that people are fighting over civil issues and since everyone has they same economic status then there is no need to steal. There is a great sense in Bellamy's writing that social Darwinism plays a significant role. Clearly there is an idea of eugenics (reminiscent of the Oneida community) where the bad parts of society are simply bread out of society. "Like the social Darwinists of his day, Bellamy viewed character traits as inborn and believed that the morally as well as the physically unfit must be weeded out if human beings were to evolve to a higher state." (Strauss, 76) What must be addressed about this particular work is the influence that it exhibited on other writers in Bellamy's day and after. "It influenced movements of Christian socialism wherever they appeared it positions echo and re-echo on George Bernard Shaw, Veblen, Debs, Norman Thomas and the early Zionists." (Halewood, 451) Although the book is missing from today's list of important contributions to American thought, the book's enormous popularity at the end of the previous century must be acknowledged. "Looking Backward was possibly the most popular utopian novel ever written, igniting a nationwide social reform movement and leaving an enduring mark upon the rising generation of American intellectuals and writers." (McClay, 264) The problems that it raises for us, as readers near the end of the twentieth century, are in areas of middle-class elitism, overt ideology, and the lack of demonstrative communal activity. This book is, however, a powerful example of a novel that moved from text to social reform movement. It has been said that the book is not a well-written piece of literature but that the significance of the text is in its effect on the society in which it was consumed. A utopian vision of a future world does two very important functions. One, it shows a more perfect vision of a happy world. But inherently in that vision is the need to discuss or point out all of the elements of the current world that make for an unhappy world. This book had profound influence not so much in the literary world, although numerous other utopian texts were produced in the years following its publication. With Bellamy we find a book that influenced nationalism throughout the United States and lead to socialistic reforms in policy in the early part of the twentieth century.

I originally read this book while taking a course that examined the evolution of Science Fiction. To appreciate this book you have to understand a few things before reading it. First Bellamy is using this book to advocate this novel system of social organization call it Socialism meets market economics, which is actually an interesting system. At the time the book was written it was a sensation and many groups were formed with the aim of bringing about the same Utopian social system described in the book.
Second when trying to predict what life will be like 100 years in the future, your gonna get some stuff wrong. Some other reviewers seem put off by this (I don't see anyone slamming Clarke for getting 2001 wrong though) but I think it is more interesting to see how many things he got right.
Third, this is no action novel. The story is set entirely in Boston and there are no legions of attacking androids or well anything that is terribly exciting. So if Stainless Steel Rat is a staple of your literary consumption you may want to stay away. Then again you might not, the maxim that states that to know where you're going you have to know where you've been holds true for the genre of SF and Looking Backward is a formative part of that past.

The utopia envisioned by Bellamy is so outrageous that I cannot help but to think that this was a satire. Even without the knowledge that socialist utopias would fail miserably wherever tried, surely no one could possibly believe what Bellamy, who does seem intelligent, pretends to believe. Did he really think that mere love of country, and of fellow man, would inspire everyone to be economically productive? Surely, anyone who believes this has no understanding of human nature. Did he really believe that we would want to live in a society in which a man couldn't sell a five-dollar item to his neighbor without going to the federal government for approval? Did he really believe in a world without war? If this book was meant to be a satire, give Bellamy credit. If not, then he must have been such an idealist as to be completely blind to reality--the reality of human nature.

Having never really heard of this novel or its author before, I was rather surprised to discover how immensely popular it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Edward Bellamy does an excellent albeit sometimes pedantic job of communicating his socioeconomic views and provides an interesting and informative read, despite the fact that the utopia of his fictional creation is a socialist nightmare in the realm of my own personal philosophy. It is very important to understand the time in which Bellamy was writing, especially for a conservative-minded thinker such as myself who holds many of Bellamy's views as anathema. It was the mid-1880s, a time of great social unrest; vast strikes by labor unions, clashes between workers and managers, a debilitating economic depression. Bellamy, to his credit, in no way comes off as holier than thou; his wealthy protagonist recognizes his own responsibility in seeing the world in the eyes of the more prosperous classes, basically ignoring the plights of the poor and downtrodden, having inherited rather than earned the money he is privileged to enjoy, etc. This makes the character's observations and conclusions very impactful upon the reader.
While I do respect Bellamy's views and understand the context in which they germinated, I cannot help but describe his future utopia as nothing less than naïve, socialistic, unworkable, and destructive of the individual spirit. Indeed, it sounds to me like vintage Soviet communism, at least in its ideals. Bellamy is a Marxist with blinders on. I should describe the actual novel at this point. The protagonist, an insomniac having employed a mesmerist to help him sleep through the night, finds himself waking up not the following morning in 1887 but in a completely changed world in 2000. His bed chamber was a subterranean fortress of sorts which only he, his servant, and the mesmerist (who left the city that same night) even knew about, and apparently his home proper burned down on that fateful night and thus his servant was clearly unable to bring him out of his trance the following morning. It is only by accident that Dr. Leekes of twentieth-century Boston discovers the unknown tomb and helps resuscitate its remarkable inhabitant. 20th-century life is wholly unlike anything the protagonist has ever known, and the book basically consists of a number of instruction sessions by the Leekes as to how society has been virtually perfected over the preceding 100 years. There is no more war, crime, unhappiness, discrimination, etc. There are no such things as wages or prices, even. All men and women are paid the same by virtue of their being human beings; while money does not exist, everyone has everything they possibly need easily available to them for purchase with special credit cards. Every part of the economy is controlled by the national government, and it is through cooperation of the brotherhood of men that production has exceeded many times over that of privately controlled industries fighting a war against each other in the name of capitalism.
Bellamy's future utopia is most open to question in terms of the means by which individualism is supposedly strengthened rather than smothered, how a complex but seemingly set of incentives supposedly keep each worker happy and productive, how invention or improvement of anything is possible in such a world, and how this great society does not in fact become a mirror of Khrushchev's Russian state. Such a society consisting of an "industrial army" and controlled in the minutest of terms by a central national authority simply sounds like Communism to my ears and is equally as unsustainable. Of course, Bellamy wrote this novel many years before the first corruptions of Marx's dangerous dreams were made a reality on earth. As I said, I disagree with just about everything Bellamy praises, and I think almost anyone would agree his utopia is an impossibility, but I greatly respect the man for his bold, humanitarian vision and applaud his efforts to make the world a better place. In fact, many groups organized themselves along the lines of the world Bellamy envisioned, so the novel's influence on contemporary popular thought is beyond question. Looking Backward remains a fascinating read in our own time.
I should make clear that the novel is not completely a dry recitation of socioeconomic arguments and moralistic treatises. Bellamy makes the story of this most unusual of time travelers a most enjoyable one, bringing in an unusual type of old-fashioned romance to supply the beating heart of a novel that had the potential to become overly analytical and thus rather boring reading otherwise. He also managed to grab me by the scruff of the neck and shake me around a couple of times with his concluding chapter, quite shocking me with a couple of unexpected plot twists. This great humanist of the late nineteenth century can teach us all something about what it means to be truly human, although I fear that his socioeconomic theories are themselves far too romanticized to have much practical relevance in the lives of modern men and women.

A very intellectual utopian novel, full of ideas and the author goes into good details that utopian readers prefer. Not just sweeping statements about how great everything is, but actual details of how things got that way, or why they were chosen. I recommend the second book as well, called Equality.

Equality: Utopian Classic!

If you're expecting some sort of retro science fiction novel, let me warn you off. "Looking Backward" is a philosophical tract in the form of a colloquy in the form of a romance novel.

A fascinating, heartfelt and audacious socioeconomic treatise, it lays out ways in which America might come to terms with the staggering inequalities and unrest of the late nineteenth century. Knowing what we do more than a century later, it seems woefully naïve in its vision. Still, it commands us to stand tall in a way that is peculiarly American. Despite the prevailing distrust of government, we should realize that an America that actually lived up to the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution would be a darn good place to live. Is that too much to hope for?

I originally read this book because Isaac Asimov said it was the most boring book he was glad he had read. In a way he was right. Like "Moby Dick", the book is much more interesting to have read than to read.

The author's purpose was to describe what he thought was the ideal society. Since in 1887 he was living in a society which had resolved seemingly intractable problems like slavery, it seemed to him that a future society might also have solved problems that seemed intractable to his contemporaries.

In his imagined society, there is no conflict. Everyone chooses a job, and in return is assured of the necessities of life.

Perhaps the best way of describing the defects of the book is to note that the author argues that authors should not be part of this system, but should still be capitalists: in other words the socialism he advocates is for OTHER people. This is an easy pattern to recognise: left-wing politicians today send their own children to private schools, but insist that the public schools are perfect for other people's children. Then they get in their chauffeur-driven limosines to go to a meeting to plan to tax impoverished West Virginia coal-miners to pay to extend the Washington metro system on the grounds that other people shouldn't drive cars.

I enjoyed reading "Looking Backward." It speaks much about the problems facing America near the turn of the century; the problems that affected almost everyone in America every day. The problems of greedy monopolists is the most evident, but also others. The book is not as much as a story as it is the author laying out his groundwork for a perfect society with a story sort of, but not really, built around it. There is sort of a romace, but almost the entire book is characters telling the protagonist what the future is like. I do find it funny though. Back in the 19th century, authors GREATLY underestimated the technological progress of mankind. Just decades later, it was the opposite- and authors were greatly overestimating it.

My first experience with this book was in college. As my professor lectured us to the smallest detail and never asked questions, I didnt bother reading it. My prof made this out to be a shining blueprint of how we should live. Finally broke down and read it myself recently. Im glad my teacher didnt have his way!

Julian West is a well to do Bostonite who goes into a deep trance induced sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. Dr. Leete, the man who revived him, and his family become Mr. West's host and guide. Shortly after West went to bed, the United States government took over the entire enconomy and brought Heaven on Earth.

I really cant bring myself to be to harsh to Mr. Bellamy's socialist leanings. He did write this novel a full 30 years before the first workers' paradise started terrorizing its citizens and neighbors. Actually, Mr. Bellamy should be commended. He does a great job at picking out the major woes of his time and gives a brief but surprisingly comprehensive look at one of the two logical alternate solutions we could have taken. Of course we took the alternate route. That being to legally discourage monopolies and set up a minimal social safety net while still allowing for private property ownership and economic competition. Thank God we went this way!

"Looking Backward" also gives us an interesting look into the socialist mind. Nationalizing the economy and abolishing private property ownership solves every woe in this alternate universe from starvation to diaper rash. You also often see the near religious ferver of a dyed in the wool socialist in West's conversations with Dr. Leete which often go something like this:

West: Goodness, this is some fine strawberry jam!

Leete: Well of course it is! Our jam makers are fully educated with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree from your awful, evil and backward times. What do you expect?

As others have noted, this society is completely unworkable. While reading this book, I tried to figure out how I would operate in Bellamy's world. Personally, I would get a low stress job and work just enough to get by. Why do more? You get paid the exact same amount as everyone else and can live in a mansion if you want! I know what Bellamy would say. Im just a cretin from an unenlightened alternate universe. Everyone in his world strives for their best out of their undying love for their fellow man. Yeah, whatever. Heres another gem I note nobody has picked up on. North America, Europe and Australia subscribe to this socialist model but not the rest of the world. Its safe to assume they follow Bellamy's US model of having no armed forces or legal power to wage war. So whats to stop nations not on this little love fest from moving in and taking over? Hmmmmmmmmm.

This is an enjoyable and enlightening book. I dont endorse any theory Bellamy offers in it, but its still a good read.