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List of utopian literature

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List of utopian literature

This is a list of utopian literature. A utopia is a community or society possessing highly desirable or perfect qualities. It is a common literary theme, especially in speculative fiction and science fiction.

Contents

Pre-16th century

The word "utopia" was coined in Greek language by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, but the genre has roots dating back to antiquity.

  • The Republic (ca. 370-360 BC) by Plato - One of the earliest conceptions of a utopia.
  • Laws (360 BC) by Plato
  • Sacred History (ca. 300 BC) by Euhemerus - Describes the rational island paradise of Panchaea
  • Islands of the Sun (ca. 165 - 50 BC) by Iambulus - Utopian novel describing the features and inhabitants of the title Islands
  • Life of Lycurgus (ca. 100 BC) by Plutarch
  • The Peach Blossom Spring (Tao Hua Yuan) (421 CE) by Tao Yuanming
  • The Virtuous City (Al-Madina al-Fadila) by Al-Farabi (874-950) - A story of Medina as an ideal society ruled by the prophet Muhammad

    • 16th-19th centuries

  • Utopia (1516) by Thomas More.
  • Wolfaria (1521) by Johann Eberlin von Günzburg - a Lutheran utopia which levied harsh punishments on sinners
  • La Città felice (1553) by Francesco Patrizi
  • A Work touching the Good Ordering of a Common Weal (1559) by Joannes Ferrarius Montanus
  • Siuqila: Too Good to be True (1580) by Thomas Lupton
  • La Citta del Sole (later published as Civitas solis) (1602) by Tommaso Campanella
  • Il Belluzzi, o vero della citta felice (1615) by Lodovico Zuccolo
  • Histoire du grand et admirable royaume d'Antangil (1616) attributed to Jean de Moncy - detailed description of the ordering of the island of Antangil, with a classical republic and multiple checks on power
  • Christianopolis (Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio) (1619) by Johann Valentin Andreae
  • The City of the Sun (1623) by Tommaso Campanella - Depicts a theocratic and egalitarian society.
  • La Repubblica d'Evandria (1625) by Lodovico Zuccolo
  • New Atlantis (1627) by Sir Francis Bacon
  • The Man in the Moone (1638) by Francis Godwin
  • A Description of the Famous Kingdom of Macaria (1641) by Samuel Hartlib
  • Marcaria (1641) by Gabriel Plattes
  • Nova Solyma (1648) by Samuel Gott
  • The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652) by Gerrard Winstanley - a radical communist vision of an ideal state
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca. 1653-1694) by François Rabelais
  • The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) by James Harrington - a constitutionalist utopian republic in which a balanced allocation of land ensured a balanced government
  • Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (Histoire Comique Contenant les Etats et Empires de la Lune) (1657) by Cyrano de Bergerac
  • The Blazing World (1666) by Margaret Cavendish - Describes a utopian society in a story mixing science-fiction, adventure, and autobiography.
  • The Isle of Pines (1668) by Henry Neville - Five people are shipwrecked on an idyllic island in the Southern Hemisphere.
  • The History of the Sevarites or Sevarambi (1675) by Denis Vairasse
  • The Southern Land Known (La Terre Australe connue) (1676) by Gabriel de Foigny
  • Sinapia (1682)
  • The Adventures of Telemachus (1699) by Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon
  • Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
  • Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
  • The Adventures of Sig. Gaudentio di Lucca (1737) by Simon Berington
  • The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751) by Robert Paltock
  • A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) by Edmund Burke
  • Rasselas (1759) by Samuel Johnson
  • Millenium Hall (1762) by Sarah Scott
  • An Account of the First Settlement ... of the Cessares (1764) by James Burgh
  • Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (original title: L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais, which translates literally to The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One) (1771) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier
  • Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772) by Denis Diderot - A set of philosophical dialogues written by Denis Diderot, inspired by Louis Antoine de Bougainville's Voyage autour du monde. Diderot presents Bougainville's descriptions of Tahiti as a utopia, standing in contrast to European culture.
  • Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) by William Godwin
  • Description of Spensonia (1795) by Thomas Spence
  • Essay on Population (1798) by Thomas Robert Malthus
  • Theory of the Four Movements (1808) by Charles Fourier
  • The Empire of the Nairs (1811) by James Henry Lawrence
  • The Voyage to Icaria (1842) by Étienne Cabet - Inspired the Icarian movement
  • Sibling Life or Brothers and Sisters (Swedish: Syskonlif; 1848) by Fredrika Bremer
  • Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1871) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an utopian novel with a superior subterranean cooperative society.
  • Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler - Satirical utopian novel with dystopian elements set in the Southern Alps, New Zealand.
  • Mizora, (1880–81) by Mary E. Bradley Lane
  • A Crystal Age (1887), by W.H. Hudson - An amateur ornithologist and botanist falls down a crevice, and wakes up centuries later, in a world where humans live in families, in harmony with each other and animals; but, where reproduction, emotions, and secondary sexual characteristics are repressed, except for the Alpha males and females; and, the human species is gradually dying out.
  • Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy.
  • Freeland (1890) by Theodor Hertzka
  • Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900 (1890) by Lady Florence Dixie - The female protagonist poses as a man, Hector l'Estrange, is elected to the House of Commons, and wins women the vote. The book ends in the year 1999, with a description of a prosperous and peaceful Britain governed by women.
  • News from Nowhere (1892) by William Morris - "Nowhere" is a place without politics, a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
  • 2894, or The Fossil Man (A Midwinter Night's Dream) (1894) by Walter Browne
  • A Traveler from Altruria (1894) by William Dean Howells
  • Equality (1897) by Edward Bellamy
  • The Future State: Production and Consumption in the Socialist State. (Der Zukunftsstaat: Produktion und Konsum im Sozialstaat.) (1898) by Kārlis Balodis - he adopted the pseudonym Ballod-Atlanticus from Bacon's book Nova Atlantis (1627)

    • 20th-21st centuries

  • NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages by Jack Adams - A feminist utopian science fiction novel printed in Topeka, Kansas in 1900.
  • A Modern Utopia (1905) by H. G. Wells - An imaginary, progressive utopia on a planetary scale in which the social and technological environment are in continuous improvement, a world state owns all land and power sources, positive compulsion and physical labor have been all but eliminated, general freedom is assured, and an open, voluntary order of "samurai" rules.
  • Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - An isolated society of women who reproduce asexually has established an ideal state that reveres education and is free of war and domination.
  • The New Moon: A Romance of Reconstruction (1918) by Oliver Onions
  • The Islands of Wisdom (1922) by Alexander Moszkowski - In the novel various utopian and dystopian islands that embody social-political ideas of European philosophy are explored. The philosophies are taken to their extremes for their absurdities when they are put into practice. It also features an "island of technology" which anticipates mobile telephones, nuclear energy, a concentrated brief-language that saves discussion time and a thorough mechanization of life.
  • Men Like Gods (1923) by H. G. Wells - Men and women in an alternative universe without world government in a perfected state of anarchy ("Our education is our government," a Utopian named Lion says;) sectarian religion, like politics, has died away, and advanced scientific research flourishes; life is governed by "the Five Principles of Liberty," which are privacy, freedom of movement, unlimited knowledge, truthfulness, and freedom of discussion and criticism.
  • War with the Newts (1936) by Karel Čapek - Satirical science fiction novel.
  • For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs (1938, published in 2003) by Robert A. Heinlein - A futuristic utopian novel explaining practical views on love, freedom, drive, government and economics.
  • Islandia (1942) by Austin Tappan Wright - An imaginary island in the Southern Hemisphere, a utopia containing many Arcadian elements, including a policy of isolation from the outside world and a rejection of industrialism.
  • Walden Two (1948) by B. F. Skinner - A community in which every aspect of living is put to rigorous scientific testing. A professor and his colleagues question the effectiveness of the community started by an eccentric man named T.E. Frazier.
  • Childhood's End (1954) by Arthur C. Clarke - Alien beings guide humanity towards a more economically productive and technologically advanced society, allowing humans to broaden their mental capacities.
  • Island (1962) by Aldous Huxley - Follows the story of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist, who shipwrecks on the fictional island of Pala and experiences their unique culture and traditions which create a utopian society.
  • "Eutopia" (1967) by Poul Anderson
  • The Lathe of Heaven (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin - A man is able to "effectively" dream, changing waking reality. A psychologist to whom he goes for treatment tries to use the man's talent to improve society but finds that each of his "solutions" has disastrous unintended consequences.
  • The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin - The story of two planets, one very much like the capitalist, materialistic, profligate United States and the other a "nonpropertarian", anarchist society in which private ownership is unknown and people merely use as much natural resources or finished goods as they need. The two worlds are walled off (as were the capitalist and Communist world at the time of its writing). A physicist named Shevek travels between the two worlds and compares them in a literary structure much like that of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.
  • Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (1975) by Ernest Callenbach - Ecological utopia in which the Pacific Northwest has seceded from the union to set up a new society.
  • Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy - The story of a middle-aged Hispanic woman who has visions of two alternative futures, one utopian and the other dystopian.
  • The Probability Broach (1980) by L. Neil Smith - A libertarian or anarchic utopia
  • Voyage from Yesteryear (1982) by James P. Hogan - A post-scarcity economy where money and material possessions are meaningless.
  • Always Coming Home (1985) by Ursula K. Le Guin - A combination of fiction and fictional anthropology about a society in California in the distant future.
  • Pacific Edge (1990) by Kim Stanley Robinson - Set in El Modena, California in 2065, the story describes a transformation process from the late twentieth century to an ecologically sane future.
  • The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) by Starhawk - A post-apocalyptic novel depicting two societies, one a sustainable economy based on social justice, and its neighbor, a militaristic and intolerant theocracy.
  • 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) by Arthur C. Clarke - Describes human society in 3001 as seen by an astronaut who was frozen for a thousand years.
  • Aria (2001-2008) by Kozue Amano - A manga and anime series set on terraformed version of the planet Mars in the 24th century. The main character, Akari, is a trainee gondolier working in the city of Neo-Venezia, based on modern day Venice.
  • Manna (2003) by Marshall Brain - Essay that explores several issues in modern information technology and user interfaces, including some around transhumanism. Some of its predictions, like the proliferation of automation and AI in the fast food industry, are becoming true years later. Second half of the book describes perfect Utopian society.

    • References

    List of utopian literature Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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