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Looking Backward
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since January 2007. |
 cover of Looking Backward: 2000-1887 |
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| Author | Edward Bellamy |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Utopian novel |
| Publisher | William Ticknor |
| Released | 1888 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | vii, 470 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | Equality |
Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from western Massachusetts, and was first published in 1888. It was written in reaction to the disillusionment with an increasingly competitive and industrial society. Looking Backward sold more than 1 million copies. His work known as "nationalism" inspired the formation of more than 160 Nationalist Clubs to propagate his ideas.
Contents |
The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up more than a century later. He finds himself on the same spot (Boston) but in a totally changed world: It is the year 2000 and, while he was sleeping, the U.S.A. has been transformed into a socialist utopia. This book is basically a microphone for Bellamy's complex thoughts about improving the future.
The young man readily finds a guide who shows him around and explains all the advances of this new age, including, drastically reduced working hours for people performing menial jobs and community kitchens for busy housewives. Everyone retires with full benefits at age 45. The productive capacity of America is commonly owned, and the goods of society are equally distributed to its citizens.
Although the author was unable to envision the technology that would support some of his predictions in the future, they are frequently compared with actual social and technological developments since the book was written. For example, Julian West is taken to a store which, with its descriptions of cutting out the middleman to cut down on waste, somewhat resembles a modern consumer wholesaler like Sam's Club or Costco. Bellamy also predicts classical music being available in the home through cable "telephone".
In 1897, Bellamy wrote a sequel, Equality, dealing with women's rights, education and many other issues. Bellamy wrote the sequel to elaborate and clarify many of the ideas merely touched upon in Looking Backward.
Sequels written by other authors include:
- Looking Beyond (1891), by Ludwig A. Geissler
- Looking Forward (1906), by Harry W. Hillman
- Looking Further Forward (1890), by Richard C. Michaelis
- Young West (1894), by Solomon Schindler
- Mr. East's Experiences in Mr. Bellamy's World (1891), by Conrad Wilbrandt
William Morris's 1890 utopia News from Nowhere was partly written in reaction against this utopia, which Morris did not find congenial. The book's descriptions of utopian urban planning had a practical influence on Ebenezer Howard's founding of the garden city movement in England, and on the design of the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles.
During the Great Strikes of 1877, Eugene V. Debs, though already a union member, opposed the strikes and argued that there was no essential necessity for the conflict between capital and labor. However, Debs was influenced by the book to turn to a more socialist direction. He soon helped to form the American Railway Union. With supporters from the Knights of Labor and from the immediate vicinity of Chicago, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike in June 1894. This came to be known as the Pullman Strike.
The book was re-written in 1974 by American science fiction writer Mack Reynolds as Looking Backward from the Year 2000. Matthew Kapell, a historian and anthropologist, examined this re-writing in his essay, "Mack Reynolds' Avoidance of his own Eighteenth Brumaire: A Note of Caution for Would-Be Utopians."
In 1984, Herbert Knapp and Mary Knapp's "Red, White and Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama" appeared. The book was in part a memoir of their careers teaching at fabled Balboa High School, but also a re-interpretation of the Canal Zone as a creature of turn-of-the-century Progressivism, a workers' paradise. The Knapps employed Bellamy's "Looking Backward" as their heuristic model for understanding Progressive ideology as it shaped the Canal Zone.
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 46, 436.
- Looking Backward From 2000 to 1887, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Available on Eserver
- American History: A Survey, Alan Brinkley. McGraw Hill, Columbia University. 2003.