In Utopia …genre of literature, sometimes called utopian fiction, that is still as fresh today as it was in the 16th century. Read More
novels
In novel: Fantasy and prophecy …World (1932) showed how dangerous utopianism could be, since the desire for social stability might condone conditioning techniques that would destroy the fundamental human right to make free choices. Toward the end of his life Huxley produced a cautious utopian vision in Island (1962), but the dystopian horrors of his… Read More
satires
In satire: Literature …genre such as the fictional utopia seems odd. From the publication of Thomas More’s eponymous Utopia (1516), however, satire has been an important ingredient of utopian fiction. More drew heavily on the satire of Horace, Juvenal, and Lucian in composing his great work. For example, like a poem by Horace,… Read More
science fiction
In science fiction: Utopias and dystopias Sir Thomas More’s learned satire Utopia (1516)—the title is based on a pun of the Greek words eutopia (“good place”) and outopia (“no place”)—shed an analytic light on 16th-century England along rational, humanistic lines. Utopia portrayed an ideal society in a hypothetical… Read More
technology
In history of technology: Criticisms of technology …the wonders of the new man-made environment growing up around them. London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, with its arrays of machinery housed in the truly innovative Crystal Palace, seemed to be the culmination of Francis Bacon’s prophetic forecast of man’s increasing dominion over nature. The new technology seemed to fit… Read More
