From Plato’s Republic to the hippie communes of the U.S. in the 1960s, humans have proposed many forms of ideal societies. The first book I’m reading for the 2015 Mount TBR reading challenge fits into this continuum. In A Modern Utopia, H.G. Wells presents a vision of a nearly-perfect human civilization in which the narrator and his companion are transported from Earth to another planet with exactly the same geography, but a much different social organization and culture.
The novel is a bit preachy for my taste, but it is interesting to see what a 19th century intellectual thought a perfect world would be like.
I’ll post a more complete review of the book when I finish it. In the meantime, I’m using this study guide from the British Library to give me a bit of historical perspective on utopian theories.
