"A Modern Utopia": Science-Fiction Nearer the Gods
Sacred ideals populate surreal settings
[First Published: June 10, 2022]
“There is no justice in Nature perhaps, but the idea of justice must be sacred.”
Happy Friday. For this week’s book review, we return to the father of science fiction—H.G. Wells. My previous review of his works, The Time Machine, pioneered a once niche literary genre into a mainstay of literary, cinematic, and poetic exploration. First published in 1905, A Modern Utopia is not for the surface-level sci-fi reader. Several points in the story are more laborious than enjoyable.
Nevertheless, it is a welcome challenge for those curious about what is to come of our world. Wells masterfully outlines a postmodern structure of a planet “out beyond Sirius.” The novel comes in at 265 pages, which at times can feel like a short story, and at other times it can feel like a dictionary.
While walking the Swiss Alps, two English travelers fall into a space warp and suddenly find themselves in another world. In many ways, the same as our own—even down to the characters that inhabit it—this new planet is still radically different, for the two walkers are now upon a Utopian Earth controlled by a single World Government. Here, as they soon learn, all share a common language, there is sexual, economic, and racial equality, and society is ruled by socialist ideals enforced by an austere, voluntary elite: the ‘samurai.’ But what will the Utopians make of these new visitors from a less perfect world?
A Modern Utopia is a compelling blend of philosophical discussion and imaginative narrative. The novel is one Wells’s most positive visions of the future. Prophetic and horrific, this utopian vision is a warped mixture of samurai castes, mass extinction of inferior races, and the totalitarian World States, outlined in a series of pompous intellectual meanderings–like I said, positive. A Modern Utopia sometimes would make Huxley and Orwell quiver with fear. The book is written more as non-fiction than fiction. Mainly, Wells outlines what he thinks would make for the best possible society, essentially a police-state, with a thin fictional premise of two travelers getting lost in the Alps.
A group called the samurai is the ruling class. While their power is undisputed, the group of societal elites makes up about 4% of the population. They follow a rigid rule of conduct: no alcohol, drugs, smoking, or betting. They must sleep alone for at least four nights a week. All political power rests in the samurai. They are the only administrators, lawyers, practicing doctors, and public officials of almost all kinds, and they are the only voters.
The novel has elements of a classic utopia: a stranger visits an ideally structured, considered society, explores, and ultimately returns home (see C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy), but Wells undertakes his visit to Utopia with unapologetic, intentional social critiques. Wells opts to write in a somewhat chaotic fusion of two types of writing simultaneously. On the one hand, it is an exposition of a utopian vision for humanity. On the other hand, as he visits an alternate version of contemporary Earth, it is the adventure of “The Voice” (who is explicitly introduced as not Wells but seems to be a lot like Wells).
The narrator is not transported mysteriously to the Utopian world but begins by reasoning about what a Utopia would have to be like following modern understandings of government, society, culture, and religion. Wells accomplishes one of the most critical features of science-fiction: the ability to allow your reader to experience imaginative settings and unique characters with nonfictional problems. A Modern Utopia demands introspection at a crucial level of thought. Well's vision of an ideal world is not romantic or idealistic. Instead, it is one of uniformity and consolidation of power in favor of “equality.” But before picking up this novel to experience it for yourself, remember that parts of it read more like a philosophical essay rather than a straight-up sci-fi adventure. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the romantic ideas of the past and is open to philosophical and political discussion. Understanding such issues around civilization is important–never sacrificing the possible for the perfect.