Looking Backward, from 2000 to 1887

One of the most influential of all late 19th century American novels, Looking Backward tells the tale of Julian West, a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, who after having dined with his fiancée, is placed in a mesmeric trance on 30th May 1887, and awakes to find himself in the year 2000. During his 113-year sleep he discovers that Humanity has made huge technical and social advances. Urban squalor and pollution are gone, inequality has been abolished, and every member of society is provided with a solid education and all material wants. Throughout the book Bellamy contrasts this futuristic paradise with the appalling inequality and exploitation of the nineteenth century. It is sobering to discover that the author's analysis of the ills facing industrialised societies remains shockingly familiar today: pollution, exploitation, poverty, crime and the use of wealth to buy influence. The answers proposed in Looking Backwards will excite or shock, and spur a reappraisal of the best path into our own future.