List of utopian literature explained

This is a list of utopian literature. A utopia is a community or society possessing highly desirable or perfect qualities. It is a common literary theme, especially in speculative fiction and science fiction.

Pre-16th century

The word "utopia" was coined in Greek language by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, but the genre has roots dating back to antiquity.

• Assemblywomen (391 BC) by Aristophanes - Early piece of utopian satire. Aristophanes's play mocks Athenian democracy's excesses through the story of the Athenian women taking control of the government and instituting a proto-communist utopia.^[1]
• The Republic (ca. 370-360 BC) a Socratic dialogue by Plato which eventually arrives at a thought experiment of Kallipolis, the "Beautiful City" - One of the earliest conceptions of a utopia.^{[2] [3]}
• Laws (360 BC) by Plato^[4]
• The Republic (ca. 300 BC) by Zeno of Citium, an ideal society based on the principles of Stoicism.
• Sacred History (ca. 300 BC) by Euhemerus – Describes the rational island paradise of Panchaea^[5]
• Islands of the Sun (ca. 165–50 BC) by Iambulus – Utopian novel describing the features and inhabitants of the title Islands^[6]
• Life of Lycurgus (ca. 100 CE) by Plutarch^[3]
• The Peach Blossom Spring (Tao Hua Yuan) (421 CE) by Tao Yuanming^[7]
• The Virtuous City (Al-Madina al-Fadila) by Al-Farabi (874–950) – A story of Medina as an ideal society ruled by Muhammad^[8]
• The Book of the City of Ladies (1404) by Christine de Pizan – the earliest European work on women's history by a woman,^[9] and about a utopian city constructed exclusively by women's histories.

16th–17th centuries

• Utopia (1516) by Thomas More^{[3] [10]} which coined the modern term, referring to a "Nowhere Place".
• Wolfaria (1521) by Johann Eberlin von Günzburg – a Lutheran utopia which levied harsh punishments on sinners
• La Città felice (1553) by Francesco Patrizi^[11]
• A Work touching the Good Ordering of a Common Weal (1559) by Joannes Ferrarius Montanus
• (1580) by Thomas Lupton^[12]
• Repubblica immaginaria (1580s) by Ludovico Agostini
• The City of the Sun (later published as Civitas solis) (1602) by Tommaso Campanella^[12]
• Il Belluzzi, o vero della citta felice (1615) by Lodovico Zuccolo^[12]
• Histoire du grand et admirable royaume d'Antangil (1616) attributed to Jean de Moncy – detailed description of the ordering of the island of Antangil, with a classical republic and multiple checks on power^{[13] [14]}
• Christianopolis (Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio) (1619) by Johann Valentin Andreae^{[3] [12]}
• The City of the Sun (1623) by Tommaso Campanella – Depicts a theocratic and egalitarian society.^[3]
• La Repubblica d'Evandria (1625) by Lodovico Zuccolo^[12]
• New Atlantis (1627) by Sir Francis Bacon^{[12] [15]}
• The Man in the Moone (1638) by Francis Godwin^{[3] [12]}
• A Description of the Famous Kingdom of Macaria (1641) by Samuel Hartlib^[3]
• Marcaria (1641) by Gabriel Plattes^[12]
• Nova Solyma (1648) by Samuel Gott^[3]
• The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652) by Gerrard Winstanley – a radical communist vision of an ideal state^{[3] [12]}
• Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca. 1653–1694) by François Rabelais^{[3] [12]}
• The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) by James Harrington – a constitutionalist utopian republic in which a balanced allocation of land ensured a balanced government^{[3] [12]}
• Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (Histoire Comique Contenant les Etats et Empires de la Lune) (1657) by Cyrano de Bergerac^[3]
• The Blazing World (1666) by Margaret Cavendish – Describes a utopian society in a story mixing science-fiction, adventure, and autobiography.^[3]
• The Isle of Pines (1668) by Henry Neville – Five people are shipwrecked on an idyllic island in the Southern Hemisphere.^[16]
• The History of the Sevarites or Sevarambi (1675) by Denis Vairasse^[3]
• The Southern Land Known (La Terre Australe connue) (1676) by Gabriel de Foigny^[3]
• Sinapia (1682)^{[13] [17]}
• The Adventures of Telemachus (1699) by Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon^[3]

18th century

• Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe^{[3] [18]}
• Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift^[3]
• The Adventures of Sig. Gaudentio di Lucca (1737) by Simon Berington^[3]
• The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751) by Robert Paltock^[3]
• A General Idea of the College of Mirania (1753) by William Smith – Describes a Eutopian educational system. This is the earliest known utopia published in the United States.^[19]
• A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) by Edmund Burke^[3]
• Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759) by Voltaire
• Rasselas (1759) by Samuel Johnson^[3]
• Millenium Hall (1762) by Sarah Scott^[3]
• An Account of the First Settlement ... of the Cessares (1764) by James Burgh^[3]
• Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (original title: L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais, which translates literally to The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One) (1771) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier^[3]
• Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772) by Denis Diderot – A set of philosophical dialogues written by Denis Diderot, inspired by Louis Antoine de Bougainville's Voyage autour du monde. Diderot presents Bougainville's descriptions of Tahiti as a utopia, standing in contrast to European culture.^[20]
• The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom (original title: Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki) (1776) by Ignacy Krasicki^[21]
• Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) by William Godwin^[3]
• Description of Spensonia (1795) by Thomas Spence^[3]

19th century

• Theory of the Four Movements (1808) by Charles Fourier^[3]
• The Empire of the Nairs (1811) by James Henry Lawrence^[3]
• The Voyage to Icaria (1842) by Étienne Cabet – Inspired the Icarian movement^{[22] [23]}
• Sibling Life or Brothers and Sisters (sv|Syskonlif; 1848) by Fredrika Bremer^[24]
• Book: Hunt . John Hale . The Honest Man's Book of Finance and Politics: Showing the Cause and Cure of Artificial Poverty, Dearth of Employment, and Dullness of Trade . 1862 . John Windt . . en. ^[25]
• Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1871) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an utopian novel with a superior subterranean cooperative society.^[3]
• Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler – Satirical utopian novel with dystopian elements set in the Southern Alps, New Zealand.
• Mizora, (1880–81) by Mary E. Bradley Lane

• A Crystal Age (1887), by W.H. Hudson – An amateur ornithologist and botanist falls down a crevice, and wakes up centuries later, in a world where humans live in families, in harmony with each other and animals; but, where reproduction, emotions, and secondary sexual characteristics are repressed, except for the Alpha males and females.^[26]
• Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy^[27]
• Freeland (1890) by Theodor Hertzka
• Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900 (1890) by Lady Florence Dixie – The female protagonist poses as a man, Hector l'Estrange, is elected to the House of Commons, and wins women the vote. The book ends in the year 1999, with a description of a prosperous and peaceful Britain governed by women.^[28]
• News from Nowhere (1892) by William Morris – "Nowhere" is a place without politics, a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.^[29]
• 2894, or The Fossil Man (A Midwinter Night's Dream) (1894) by Walter Browne
• A Traveler from Altruria (1894) by William Dean Howells
• Equality (1897) by Edward Bellamy
• The Future State: Production and Consumption in the Socialist State. (Der Zukunftsstaat: Produktion und Konsum im Sozialstaat.) (1898) by Kārlis Balodis – he adopted the pseudonym Ballod-Atlanticus from Bacon's book Nova Atlantis (1627)
• The God of Civilization: A Romance (1890) by Minnie A. Weeks Pittock

20th-21st centuries

• NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages by Jack Adams – A feminist utopian science fiction novel printed in Topeka, Kansas in 1900.
• Sultana's Dream (1905) by Begum Rokeya – A Bengali feminist Utopian story about Lady-Land.
• A Modern Utopia (1905) by H. G. Wells – An imaginary, progressive utopia on a planetary scale in which the social and technological environment are in continuous improvement, a world state owns all land and power sources, positive compulsion and physical labor have been all but eliminated, general freedom is assured, and an open, voluntary order of "samurai" rules.^[30]
• Beatrice the Sixteenth by Irene Clyde – A time traveller discovers a lost world, which is an egalitarian utopian postgender society.^[31]
• Red Star (novel) (1908) Red Star (Russian: Красная звезда) is Alexander Bogdanov's 1908 science fiction novel about a communist society on Mars. The first edition was published in St. Petersburg in 1908, before eventually being republished in Moscow and Petrograd in 1918, and then again in Moscow in 1922.
• by Upton Sinclair. A novel in which capitalism finds its zenith with the construction of The Pleasure Palace. During the grand opening of this, an explosion kills everybody in the world except eleven of the people at the Pleasure Palace. The survivors struggle to rebuild their lives by creating a capitalistic society. After that fails, they create a successful utopian society "The Cooperative Commonwealth," and live happily forever after.^[32]
• Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – An isolated society of women who reproduce asexually has established an ideal state that reveres education and is free of war and domination.
• The New Moon: A Romance of Reconstruction (1918) by Oliver Onions^[33]
• The Islands of Wisdom (1922) by Alexander Moszkowski – In the novel various utopian and dystopian islands that embody social-political ideas of European philosophy are explored. The philosophies are taken to their extremes for their absurdities when they are put into practice. It also features an "island of technology" which anticipates mobile telephones, nuclear energy, a concentrated brief-language that saves discussion time and a thorough mechanization of life.
• Men Like Gods (1923) by H. G. Wells – Men and women in an alternative universe without world government in a perfected state of anarchy ("Our education is our government," a Utopian named Lion says;^[34]) sectarian religion, like politics, has died away, and advanced scientific research flourishes; life is governed by "the Five Principles of Liberty," which are privacy, freedom of movement, unlimited knowledge, truthfulness, and freedom of discussion and criticism.
• Lost Horizon (1933) by James Hilton - The mythical community of Shangri-La
• The Green Child (1935) by Herbert Read - A novel based around two utopian societies: the fictional South American country of Roncador, which the protagonist gradually transforms into an idealized rural republic; and a fantastical underground realm venerating solitary philosophical meditation and the inanimate perfection of crystals.
• (1938, published in 2003) by Robert A. Heinlein – A futuristic utopian novel explaining practical views on love, freedom, drive, government and economics.
• Islandia (1942) by Austin Tappan Wright – An imaginary island in the Southern Hemisphere, a utopia containing many Arcadian elements, including a policy of isolation from the outside world and a rejection of industrialism.
• Walden Two (1948) by B. F. Skinner – A community in which every aspect of living is put to rigorous scientific testing. A professor and his colleagues question the effectiveness of the community started by an eccentric man named T.E. Frazier.
• The Noon Universe (1961-1985). The Strugatsky Brothers have been argued to have created their own utopian ideology based on the primacy of science.^[35] The series starts as a "socialist utopia" in which the humanity has survived its crises but still has problems to solve, and in which the conflict is between "the good and the better."^[36] In the later books this utopia gets gradually deconstructed.^[37]
• Island (1962) by Aldous Huxley – Follows the story of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist, who shipwrecks on the fictional island of Pala and experiences their unique culture and traditions which create a utopian society.
• Eutopia (1967) by Poul Anderson
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin - Is set between a pair of planets: one that like Earth today is dominated by private property, nation states, gender hierarchy, and war, and the other an anarchist society without private property.
• Ecotopia

The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (1975) by Ernest Callenbach – Ecological utopia in which the Pacific Northwest has seceded from the union to set up a new society.^[38]

• Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy – The story of a middle-aged Hispanic woman who has visions of two alternative futures, one utopian and the other dystopian.^[39]
• The Probability Broach (1980) by L. Neil Smith – A libertarian or anarchic utopia^[40]
• Voyage from Yesteryear (1982) by James P. Hogan – A post-scarcity economy where money and material possessions are meaningless.^[41]
• Bolo'Bolo (1983) by Hans Widmer published under his pseudonym P.M. – An anarchist utopian world organised in communities of around 500 people
• Always Coming Home (1985) by Ursula K. Le Guin – A combination of fiction and fictional anthropology about a society in California in the distant future.
• Pacific Edge (1990) by Kim Stanley Robinson – Set in El Modena, California in 2065, the story describes a transformation process from the late twentieth century to an ecologically sane future.^[42]
• The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) by Starhawk – A post-apocalyptic novel depicting two societies, one a sustainable economy based on social justice, and its neighbor, a militaristic and intolerant theocracy.
• The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry – Story set in a society which at first appears to be a utopia free of violence and severe forms of hate but actually turns out to be a dystopia with features such as euthanasia of the old and young.
• (1997) by Arthur C. Clarke – Describes human society in 3001 as seen by an astronaut who was frozen for a thousand years.
• Aria (2001–2008) by Kozue Amano – A manga and anime series set on terraformed version of the planet Mars in the 24th century. The main character, Akari, is a trainee gondolier working in the city of Neo-Venezia, based on modern-day Venice.
• Manna (2003) by Marshall Brain – Essay that explores several issues in modern information technology and user interfaces, including some around transhumanism. Some of its predictions, like the proliferation of automation and AI in the fast food industry, are becoming true years later. Second half of the book describes perfect Utopian society.^[43]
• (2014), by Joe Oliver. Essay on how to build the Utopia of Thomas More by using computers.^[44]
• The Culture series by Iain M. Banks – A science fiction series released from 1987 through 2012. The stories centre on The Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens, and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats. The main theme is of the dilemmas that an idealistic, more-advanced civilization faces in dealing with smaller, less-advanced civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviour it sometimes finds barbaric. In some of the stories action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of (or non-members of) the Culture.
• Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer – A science fiction series released from 2016 to 2021 drawing from renaissance humanism, the enlightenment, and the rationalist movement. Takes place in the year 2454, when the nation-state system has given way to a system of globe-spanning voluntary cultural collectives known as hives, each with their own set of laws and values.

See also

• List of dystopian literature

Notes and References

1. Book: Giulia Sissa . Giulia Sissa . The quest for the best. Praise, blame, utopia . Destrée . Pierre . Opsomer . Jan . Roksam . Geert . Utopias in Ancient Thought . 2021 . De Gruyter . Berlin, Germany . 978-3-11-073820-9 . 1-40.
2. Book: History of Western Philosophy. Russell . Bertrand . Bertrand Russell. 978-0671314002. 1945. 97. Simon & Schuster.
3. Book: The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Claeys, Gregory. Gregory Claeys. 2010. Cambridge University Press. 9781139828420.
4. Encyclopedia: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Plato on utopia. 21 March 2013. 9 December 2015. Bobonich. Chris. Meadows. Katherine.
5. Pinheiro, Marilia P. Futre. (2006). Utopia and Utopias: a Study on a Literary Genre in Antiquity. In Authors, Authority and Interpreters in the Ancient Novel. Groningen: Barkhuis. (pp. 147–171). .
6. Web site: Iambulus' Islands of the Sun and Hellenistic Literary Utopias. David. Winston. Science Fiction Studies. 3. 10. November 1976.
7. 1988. Palandri. Angela Jung. The Taoist Vision. A Study of T'ao Yuan-Ming's Nature Poetry. Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 15. 17–121.
8. Utopian Studies. 24. 1. 2013. 41–51. The Virtuous City: The Iranian and Islamic Heritage of Utopianism. Bakhsh. Alireza Omid. 10.5325/utopianstudies.24.1.0041. 146706033.
9. Book: Quilligan, Maureen. The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan's Cité Des Dames. 1991. Cornell University Press. 0801497884. en.
10. Book: Sullivan, E. D. S.. 1983. The Utopian Vision: Seven Essays on the Quincentennial of Sir Thomas More. San Diego, CA. San Diego State University Press.
11. Grendler. Paul F.. Utopia in Renaissance Italy: Doni's "New World". Journal of the History of Ideas. 26. 4. 1965. 479–494. 10.2307/2708495. 2708495.
12. Book: Appelbaum, Robert. Utopia and Utopianism. The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500-1640. Hadfield, Andrew. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2013. 9780191655074.
13. Book: Davis, J. C.. Utopianism. The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700. Burns, J. H.. Cambridge University Press. 1994. Cambridge. 9780521477727.
14. René-Louis Doyon. (1933). Variations de l'Utopie.
15. J.. Weinberger. 1976. Science and Rule in Bacon's Utopia: An Introduction to the Reading of the New Atlantis. The American Political Science Review. 70. 3. 865–885. 10.2307/1959872. 1959872. 147054723 .
16. Boesky. Amy. Amy Boesky. 1995. Nation, miscegenation: membering utopia in Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines. Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 37. 165–84.
17. Book: Aviles, Miguel A. Ramiro. Utopian Moments: Reading Utopian Texts . Aviles, Miguel . Davis, J. C.. Sinapia, A Political Journal to the Antipodes of Spain. Bloomsbury Academic. London. 2012. 9781849668217.
18. Book: Lenski, Noel E.. Utopia and Community in the Ancient World. 26. 2016-12-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20161221041217/https://books.google.com/books?id=mjByfKmLZlwC&pg=PA26. 2016-12-21. dead. 9780549508687.
19. Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography From 1516 to the Present, by Lyman Tower Sargent, http://openpublishing.psu.edu/utopia/
20. McDonald . Christie V . 1976 . The Reading and Writing of Utopia in Denis Diderot's "Supplement au voyage de Bougainville" . Fiction Studies . 3 . 3. 248–254 .
21. Bartoszyńska, Katarzyna. "Persuasive ironies: utopian readings of Swift and Krasicki." Comparative Literature Studies 50.4 (2013): 618-642.
22. Book: Oved, Yaacov. Two Hundred Years of American Communes. 1987. Transaction. 211. 9781412840552.
23. Book: Kesten, Seymour R.. Utopian Episodes: Daily Life in Experimental Colonies Dedicated to Changing the World. Syracuse University Press. 1996. 14. 9780815603818.
24. .
25. Sparks . Jared . Everett . Edward . Lowell . James Russell . Lodge . Henry Cabot . Jared Sparks . Edward Everett . James Russell Lowell . Henry Cabot Lodge . Critical Notices: The Honest Man's Book of Finance and Politics: Showing the Cause and Cure of Artificial Poverty, Dearth of Employment, and Dullness of Trade . . October 1862 . 95 . 569 . 22 September 2022 . O. Everett . en.
26. Dreamers in dialogue: evolution, sex and gender in the utopian visions of William Morris and William Henry Hudson . 31 December 2013. Acta Neophilologica. 46 . 1–2 . 65–80 . en-US. 10.4312/an.46.1-2.65-80 . Novák . Caterina . free .
27. Web site: SparkNotes: Looking Backward: Analysis.
28. Gates, Barbara T. (ed.), In Nature's Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing and Illustration, 1780-1930 University of Chicago Press, 2002
29. Book: Morris, William . William Morris . The Earthly Paradise . Obscure Press . 1903 . 2006 . 1-84664-523-9.
30. H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, ed. Mark R. Hillegas (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1967).
31. Web site: Clyde, Irene. 30 June 2020. SFE.
32. Book: The Millennium: A Comedy of the Year 2000. 9781609802615. Sinclair. Upton. 2017-12-19.
33. [E. F. Bleiler]
34. H. G. Wells, Men Like Gods, Book I, Ch. 5, Sect. 6.
35. Zanerv. Dmitrii. 2016-10-01. It's Easy to Be One of the Intelligentsia. Russian Studies in Literature. 52. 3–4. 282–302. 10.1080/10611975.2016.1264042. 193699422. 1061-1975.
36. News: (Give Me That) Old-Time Socialist Utopia . 25 May 2024 . The Paris Review . 11 May 2015.
37. Givens. John. October 2011. The Strugatsky Brothers and Russian Science Fiction: Editor's Introduction. Russian Studies in Literature. en. 47. 4. 3–6. 10.2753/RSL1061-1975470400. 194160128. 1061-1975.
38. Dennis Hevesi, "Ernest Callenbach, Author of ‘Ecotopia,’ Dies at 83", The New York Times, April 27, 2012.
39. Web site: Face or vase? Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. 21 September 2009. Walton. Jo. Tor Books.
40. Book: Van Belle, Douglas A.. CQ Press. 2015. A Novel Approach to Politics: Introducing Political Science through Books, Movies, and Popular Culture. 9781483368481.
41. Book: Fullbrook, Edward. 2007. Anthem Press. Real World Economics. 9781843313458.
42. BOOM A Journal of California, "The Boom interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", "Boom" Winter 2013, Vol. 3, No. 4, Interview conducted by Jon Christensen, Jan Goggans, and Ursula K. Heise.
43. Manna – the book integral text on Marshall Brain's website http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
44. Entry on the Japanese National Diet Library: http://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I026253536-00