Looking Backward

2000-1887

By: Edward Bellamy

Narrated by: Adam Sims

Published in 1888 to immediate popularity (it was the second-ever novel to sell over one million copies in the United States), Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a dynamic rejection of industrial capitalism, and presents a depiction of a socialist utopia. The book’s influence was such that a large number of "Bellamy clubs" were established in America to discuss the book’s main ideas.

The novel’s protagonist, aristocrat Julian West, falls into a deep, hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to find a very different Boston from the one he knows. In Dr. Leete he finds a guide who explains the humane and efficient society in which he now finds himself - its transformation made possible by political and technological advances.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2022 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.

Pre-Communist Wishful Thinking

I found it humous that he thought that people of 2000 would speak in the same manner using big SAT words to speak. And I get that with today's pushers of Universal Basic Income the idea that without the need to work we'll all sit around educating ourselves.

I was struck how the book and the story had a Communist outlook, centralized distribution, everyone paid the same, the government as the only employer, etc. Bellamy was fortunate to have died before some of his ideas were played out in Russia and China.