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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019) and AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021).

Saturday, November 27, 2010

20 essential works of utopian fiction

How many books have you read from this intriguing list? In my case, there are quite a few that I feel as if I've read because they are much discussed, etc., but alas I can only swear to having read 10 of the 20. I've read most of H.G. Wells as at one point or another, and may have read the Wells items a long time ago, but I can't swear to them. In one other case, I haven't read the book, but have seen the movie.

Guess this is something else I need to brush up on.

H/T Tim Handorf

2 comments:

Go Democrats said...

It's dystopian, but I think that the short story The Machine Stops would top my list. I've read six of the 20 books listed and have used both News from Nowhere and Looking Backward in class before.

Shatterface said...

I don't particularly like pure utopias which always strike me as somewhat sinister so I prefer something slightly more flawed. Something a human being might live in.

I'd have gone for Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Mars' trilogy, which is, at the very least, credible.

Or Ursula Le Guinn's ambiguous Kropotkin-inspired anarchist society from 'The Dispossessed'.