Utopian and Dystopian Reading Group discussion

34 views
Utopian fiction list

Comments Showing 1-3 of 3 (3 new)    post a comment »
dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Smallo (new)

Smallo Since fiction set in utopias is rare I'll start list. Feel free to add.

1. Utopia, Thomas Moore
2. Miracleman Golden Age, Neil Gaiman
3. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
4. Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut
5. A Planet Called Utopia, J. T. McIntosh

I know 3 and 4 are considered dystopias but I consider them utopias with price in that humans sacrificed something to solve world's major problems (war, poverty, crime). 5 maybe utopia in name only because I'm listening to it now and that society in story apparently has problems...


message 2: by Bernard (new)

Bernard Ryefield (bernard_ryefield) | 1 comments "The City of the Sun", ("La città del Sole" (it),"Civitas Solis" (lat), by Tommaso Campanella (1623) The City of the Sun

"New Atlantis" (incomplete), by Sir Francis Bacon (1627) New Atlantis

"The Commonwealth of Oceana", by James Harrington (1656) The Commonwealth of Oceana

"A Modern Utopia", by H. G. Wells (1905) A Modern Utopia


message 3: by [deleted user] (new)

Here is a short list of some of the best Utopian novels, split into three periods:

I. Classical Utopias (in addition to Moore, Wells, etc)

Mary Griffith, Three Hundred Years Hence (1836)
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards (1888)
Edward Johnson, Light Ahead for the Negro (1904)
William Morris, News From Nowhere (1890)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Moving the Mountain (1911)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1920)

II."Critical" Utopias (a term coined by Tom Moylan; basically it means that these books conceive of Utopia as a process and not as a "perfect" place that has solved all of society's ills)

Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères (1969)
Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1976)
Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1970)
Joana Russ, The Female Man (1975)
Samuel Delany, Trouble on Triton (1976)
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)
Suzy Mckee Charnas, Motherlines (1978)

III. Later Utopias

Joan Slonczewski, A Door into Ocean (1985)
Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge (1990)
Nicola Griffith, Ammonite (1992)
Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars Trilogy (1992-1996)
Suzy Mckee Charnas, The Furies (1994) and The Conqueror's Child (1999)


back to top