 Cover of the Ticknor & Co. first edition ofLooking Backward, 2000–1887 | |
| Author | Edward Bellamy |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Utopian novel Science fiction |
| Publisher | • Ticknor & Co. (Jan. 1888) • Houghton Mifflin (Sept. 1889) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | vii, 470 |
| Followed by | Equality (1897) |
| Text | Looking Backward: 2000–1887 atWikisource |
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is autopian[1]time travel[2]science fiction novel by the American journalist and writerEdward Bellamy first published in 1888.[3]
The book was translated into several languages, and in short order "sold a million copies."[4] According to historianDaniel Immerwahr, "In the 19th-century United States, onlyUncle Tom’s Cabin sold more copies in its first years" than Bellamy's book.[5]
The novel inspired severalutopian communities. In the United States alone, over 162"Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas.[6] According toErich Fromm, "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement."[7]
Looking Backward influenced many intellectuals, and appears by title in manysocialist writings of the day. Owing to its commitment to thenationalization of private property and the desire to avoid use of the term "socialism," this political movement came to be known as Nationalism (not to be confused with the political ideology ofnationalism).[8]
Bellamy's novel tells the story of a young American man named Julian West who, in 1887, falls into a deep,hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up 113 years later. He finds himself in the same location (Boston, Massachusetts), but in a totally changed world: It is the year2000, and while he was sleeping, the United States has been transformed into asocialist utopia.[1] The remainder of the book outlines Bellamy's thoughts about improving the future. The major themes include problems associated withcapitalism, a proposed socialist solution of a nationalization of all industry, and the use of an "industrial army" to organize production and distribution, as well as how to ensure free cultural production under such conditions.
The young man is awoken to a guide, Doctor Leete, who shows him around and explains all the advances of this new age, including drastically reduced working hours for people performing menial jobs and almost instantaneous, internet-like delivery of goods. Everyone retires with full benefits at age 45, and may eat in any of the public kitchens (realized asfactory-kitchens in the 1920s–30s in the USSR). The productive capacity of the United States is nationally owned, and the goods of society are equally distributed to its citizens. A considerable portion of the book is dialogue between Leete and West wherein West expresses his confusion about how the future society works and Leete explains the answers using various methods, such as metaphors or direct comparisons with 19th-century society.
Although Bellamy's novel did not discuss technology or the economy in detail, commentators frequently compareLooking Backward with actual economic and technological developments.[5] For example, Julian West is taken to a store which (with its descriptions of cutting out the middleman to cut down on waste in a similar way to theconsumers' cooperatives of his own day based on theRochdale Principles of 1844) somewhat resembles a modernwarehouse club like BJ's, Costco, or Sam's Club. He additionally introduces a concept of "credit" cards in chapters 9, 10, 11, 13, 25, and 26, but these actually function like moderndebit cards. All citizens receive an equal amount of "credit." Those with more difficult, specialized, dangerous, or unpleasant jobs work fewer hours. Bellamy also predicts both sermons and music being available in the home throughcable "telephone" (already demonstrated but commercialized only in 1890 asThéâtrophone in France).
Bellamy's ideas somewhat reflect classicalMarxism.[9] In chapter 19, for example, he has the new legal system explained. Mostcivil suits have ended in socialism, while crime has become a medical issue. The idea ofatavism, then current, is employed to explain crimes not related to inequality (which Bellamy thinks will vanish with socialism). Remaining criminals are medically treated. One professional judge presides, appointing two colleagues to state the prosecution and defense cases. If all do not agree on the verdict, then it must be tried again. Chapters 15 and 16 have an explanation of how free, independent public art and news outlets could be provided in a morelibertarian socialist system. In one case, Bellamy even writes, "the nation is the sole employer and capitalist."[10]
The decades of the 1870s and the 1880s were marked by economic and social turmoil, including theLong Depression of 1873–1879, a series ofrecessions during the 1880s, the rise oforganized labor andstrikes, and the 1886Haymarket affair and its controversial aftermath.[11] Moreover, American capitalism's tendency towards concentration into ever larger and less competitive forms—monopolies,oligopolies, andtrusts—began to make itself evident, while emigration from Europe expanded the labor pool and caused wages to stagnate.[11] The time was ripe for new ideas about economic development which might ameliorate the current social disorder.
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), a relatively unknownNew England-born novelist with a history of concern with social issues,[12] began to conceive of writing an impactful work of visionary fiction[13] shaping the outlines of autopian future, in which production and society were ordered for the smooth production and distribution of commodities to a regimented labor force. In this he was not alone—between 1860 and 1887, no fewer than 11 such works of fiction were produced in the United States by various authors dealing fundamentally with the questions of economic and social organization.[14]
Bellamy's book, gradually planned throughout the 1880s, was completed in 1887 and taken toBoston publisher Benjamin Ticknor, who published a first edition of the novel in January 1888.[15] Initial sales of the book were modest and uninspiring, but the book did find a readership in the Boston area, including enthusiastic reviews by future BellamyitesCyrus Field Willard of theBoston Globe andSylvester Baxter of theBoston Herald.
Shortly after publication, Ticknor's publishing enterprise, Ticknor and Company, was purchased by the larger Boston publisher,Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and new publishing plates were created for the book.[15] Certain "slight emendations" were made to the text by Bellamy for this second edition, released by Houghton Mifflin in September 1889.[16]
In its second release, Bellamy's futuristic novel met with enormous popular success, with more than 400,000 copies sold in the United States alone by the time Bellamy's follow-up novel,Equality, was published in 1897.[17] Sales topped 532,000 in the US by the middle of 1939.[17] The book gained an extensive readership inGreat Britain, as well, with more than 235,000 copies sold there between its first release in 1890 and 1935.[17]
TheBellamy Library of Fact and Fiction, by William Reeves, a radical London publisher, printer and bookseller was a systematic effort to organize this literature. The Bellamy Library codified series of texts designed to make political works, defined by their radical content and popular appeal, both intellectually and financially accessible to working-class activists and lower- middle-class radicals. It was especially popular amongworking men's clubs.[18]
The first version of the novel published in China, heavily edited for the tastes of Chinese readers, was titledHuitou kan jilüe (回頭看記略). This text was later retitledBainian Yi Jiao (百年一覺 ), or "A Sleep of 100 Years" and in 1891–1892 this version was serialized inWanguo gongbao;[19] the organization Guangxuehui (廣學會; Society for Promoting Education) published these pieces in a book format. This first translation, the first piece of science fiction from a Western country published inQing dynasty China, was done in an abridged format byTimothy Richard.[20] The novel was again serialized in China in 1898, inZhongguo guanyin baihua bao (中國官音白話報);[19] and in 1904, under the titleHuitou kan (Looking Backward), withinXiuxiang xiaoshuo (繡像小說; Illustrated Fiction).[20]
The book remains in print in multiple editions, with one publisher alone having reissued the title in a printing of 100,000 copies in 1945.[21]
Though Bellamy tended to stress the independence of his work,Looking Backward shares relationships and resemblances with several earlier works—most notably the anonymousThe Great Romance (1881),John Macnie'sThe Diothas (1883),[22]Laurence Gronlund'sThe Co-operative Commonwealth (1884), andAugust Bebel'sWoman in the Past, Present, and Future (1886).[23] For example, inThe True Author of Looking Backward (1890) J. B. Shipley argued that Bellamy's novel was a repeat of Bebel's arguments,[citation needed] while literary critic R. L. Shurter went so far as to argue that "Looking Backward is actually a fictionalized version ofThe Co-operative Commonwealth and little more".[24] However, Bellamy's book also bears resemblances to the early socialist theorists or 'utopian socialists'Etienne Cabet,Charles Fourier,Robert Owen, andHenri Saint-Simon, as well as to the 'Associationism' ofAlbert Brisbane, whom Bellamy had met in the 1870s.[25]
On publication,Looking Backward was praised by both theAmerican Federation of Labor and theKnights of Labor.[26] Many members of the Knights readLooking Backward and also joined Bellamy's Nationalist clubs.[26]Looking Backward was also praised byDaniel De Leon,Elizabeth Gurley Flynn andUpton Sinclair.[26]
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 inLooking Backward.
The success ofLooking Backward provoked a spate of sequels,[27] parodies, satires, dystopian, and 'anti-utopian' responses.[28] A partial list of these follows.[29]The result was a "battle of the books" that lasted through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th. The back-and-forth nature of the debate is illustrated by the subtitle of Geissler's 1891Looking Beyond, which is "A Sequel to 'Looking Backward' by Edward Bellamy and an Answer to 'Looking Forward' by Richard Michaelis".
The book was translated intoBulgarian in 1892. Bellamy personally approved a request by Bulgarian authorIliya Yovchev to make an "adapted translation" based on the realities ofBulgarian social order. The resulting work, titledThe Present as Seen by Our Descendants And a Glimpse at the Progress of the Future ("Настоящето, разгледано от потомството ни и надничане в напредъка на бъдещето"), generally followed the same plot. The events in Yovchev's version take place in anenvironmentally friendlySofia and describe the country's unique path of adapting to the new social order. It is considered by local critics to be the first Bulgarian utopian work.[30]
The book also influenced activists in Britain. ScientistAlfred Russel Wallace creditedLooking Backward for his conversion to socialism.[31] PoliticianAlfred Salter citedLooking Backward as an influence on his political thought.[32]
William Morris's1890 utopiaNews from Nowhere was partly written in reaction to Bellamy's utopia, which Morris did not find congenial.[33]
Bellamy's descriptions of utopianurban planning influencedEbenezer Howard to found thegarden city movement in England, and also influenced the design of theBradbury Building inLos Angeles.
During theGreat Strikes of 1877,Eugene V. Debs argued that there was no essential necessity for the conflict between capital and labor. Debs was influenced by Bellamy's book to turn to a moresocialist direction. He soon helped to form theAmerican Railway Union. With supporters from theKnights of Labor and from the immediate vicinity of Chicago, workers at thePullman Palace Car Company went on strike in June 1894. This came to be known as thePullman Strike.
The book had a specific and intense reception inWilhelminian Germany including various parodies and sequels, fromEduard Loewenthal, Ernst Müller andPhilipp Wasserburg,Konrad Wilbrandt andRichard Michaelis.[34]
The Russian translation ofLooking Backward was banned by theTsarist Russian censors.[35]
In the 1930s, there was a revival of interest inLooking Backward. Several groups were formed to promote the book's ideas. The largest was Edward Bellamy Association of New York; its honorary members includedJohn Dewey,Heywood Broun andRoger N. Baldwin.[36]Arthur Ernest Morgan, chairman of theTennessee Valley Authority, also admired the book and wrote the first biography of Bellamy.[36][37]
Looking Backward influenced the novelFuture of a New China byLiang Qichao.[38]
Despite never mentioning the book by name in any of his works,Looking Backward postulated a socialist-fueled utopia that "confounded"[39] Orwell, and hisNineteen Eighty-Four can be seen as a dystopian counterpoint to the utopian genre, of whichLooking Backward was a progenitor.[39]: 27 Orwell wrote ofOscar Wilde'sThe Soul of Man Under Socialism that "these optimistic forecasts make rather painful reading."[40]
Looking Backward was rewritten in 1974 by Americansocialist science fiction writerMack Reynolds asLooking Backward from the Year 2000.Matthew Kapell, a historian andanthropologist, examined this re-writing in his essay, "Mack Reynolds' Avoidance of his ownEighteenth Brumaire: A Note of Caution for Would-Be Utopians".[41]
In 1984, Herbert Knapp and Mary Knapp'sRed, White and Blue Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama appeared. The book was in part a memoir of their careers teaching at fabledBalboa High School, but also a re-interpretation of theCanal Zone as a creature of turn-of-the-century Progressivism, a workers' paradise. The Knapps used Bellamy'sLooking Backward as their heuristic model for understanding Progressive ideology as it shaped the Canal Zone.
A one-act play,Bellamy's Musical Telephone, was written by Roger Lee Hall and premiered atEmerson College in Boston in 1988 on the centennial year of the novel's publication. It was released as a DVD titledThe Musical Telephone.
an entertaining time-travel story with an upbeat ending.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)speculative fiction
Фактически налице е произведение, отличаващо се от оригинала дотолкова, че следва да се говори за нов роман, първия ни български утопичен роман. ("Basically this work differs from the original to such an extent, that we can consider it a new novel, the first Bulgarian Utopian novel.)
To Bellamy ... socialism was a tremendous product with terrible salesmen... This kind of utopian assumption confounded Orwell...
Looking Backward public domain audiobook atLibriVox