| Author | Anna Bowman Dodd |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Dystopia |
| Publisher | Cassell & Co. |
Publication date | 1887 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 88 pp. |
The Republic of the Future: or, Socialism a Reality is a novella by the American writer Anna Bowman Dodd, first published in 1887. [1] The book is a dystopia written in response to the utopian literature that was a dramatic and noteworthy feature of the second half of the nineteenth century. [2] [3]
The utopian literature of Dodd's generation consisted both of famous works and others now largely forgotten, like Laurence Gronlund's popular The Cooperative Commonwealth (1884). Dodd's book was one element in a conservative reaction to this literature. [4] Other examples of this reactive dystopian response are William Harben's The Land of the Changing Sun (1894) and Charles J. Bayne's The Fall of Utopia (1900).
Coincidentally, Dodd's book was published a year before the appearance of Edward Bellamy's famous Looking Backward (1888), the great best-seller in its genre (which in turn provoked a spate of dystopian responses).
Dodd casts her fiction in the form of an epistolary novel: Wolfgang, a Swedish aristocrat, writes letters home to his friend Hannevig while visiting New York Socialist City in the year 2050. In Dodd's fiction, Sweden retains a capitalist economy, so that Wolfgang can contrast the new utopian socialist regime in New York with the more familiar forms at home.
Dodd takes satirical aim at various liberal developments of her era, including the first stirrings of the animal rights movement (the ASPCA had been founded in New York in 1866). Dodd has her hero journey from Sweden to New York via a sub-oceanic transport system (operated by the Pneumatic Tube Electric Company). [5] As he goes, Wolfgang notes that aquatic life has resisted
the persistent and unwearying exertions of the numerous Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty among Cetacea and Crustacea... of all the vertebrate or invertebrate animals, the fish is the least amenable to reformatory discipline.
Dodd's primary targets, however, are the innovations that utopians of her age most strongly advocated, socialism, feminism, and technological progress. [7] Dodd paints a picture of a future New York as a dreary conformist society, in which the inhabitants live in identical homes and men and women dress alike. Though people work only two hours per day, they live tedious, vacuous lives. Travel is forbidden, and mediocrity is enforced by law: "All scholars, authors, artists and scientists who were found on examination to be more gifted than the average, were exiled." [8] Children are raised in day care centers; romantic love has died out. Dodd's New Yorkers of 2050 "have the look of people who have come to the end of things and who have failed to find it amusing." [9]
Since she is an anti-utopian writer, Dodd does not concentrate on the technological wonders anticipated and predicted by many utopian authors; but she does give her future New Yorkers automatic elevators and bedmaking devices and similar conveniences. Technology can make things worse instead of better: traditional food has been replaced by nutrition pills.
In Dodd's vision of the future, a socialist revolution occurred around 1900; the center of the city was destroyed with explosives, and rebuilt to socialist standards. Thinker and writer Henry George is enshrined in a Temple of Liberators.
Anna Bowman Dodd, née Blake (1855–1929), was a native of New York City, the daughter of a merchant. She wrote a number of other works in her career, including a biography of Tallyrand and books on travel.
Edward Bellamy was an American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel Looking Backward. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of numerous "Nationalist Clubs" dedicated to the propagation of his political ideas.
Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos. Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888.
Mizora is a feminist science fiction utopian novel by Mary E. Bradley Lane, first published in 1880–81, when it was serialized in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper. It appeared in book form in 1890. Mizora is "the first portrait of an all-female, self-sufficient society," and "the first feminist technological Utopia."
Aristopia: A Romance-History of the New World is an 1895 utopian novel by Castello Holford, considered the first novel-length alternate history in English.
Caesar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century is a novel by Ignatius Donnelly, famous as the author of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Caesar's Column was published pseudonymously in 1890. The book has been variously categorized as science fiction, speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, and/or apocalyptic fiction; one critic has termed it an "Apocalyptic Utopia."
Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance is a 1907 Utopian novel written by William Dean Howells. It is the final volume in Howells's "Altrurian trilogy," following A Traveler from Altruria (1894) and Letters of an Altrurian Traveler (1904).
New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future is a feminist utopian novel, written by Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett and first published in 1889. It was one element in the wave of utopian and dystopian literature that marked the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Arqtiq: A Story of the Marvels at the North Pole is a feminist utopian adventure novel, published in 1899 by its author, Anna Adolph. The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian fiction that marked the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World is an 1893 utopian fiction written by Addison Peale Russell. The book is one volume in the large body of utopian, dystopian, and speculative literature that characterized the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Milltillionaire, or Age of Bardization is a work of utopian fiction written by Albert Waldo Howard, and published under the pseudonym "M. Auberré Hovorré." The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century.
A Crystal Age is a utopian novel/Dystopia written by W. H. Hudson, first published in 1887. The book has been called a "significant S-F milestone" and has been noted for its anticipation of the "modern ecological mysticism" that would evolve a century later.
Young West: A Sequel to Edward Bellamy's Celebrated Novel "Looking Backward" is an 1894 utopian novel, written by Solomon Schindler, radical rabbi of Boston. As its subtitle indicates, the book was one of the many responses and sequels to Edward Bellamy's famous 1888 novel Looking Backward, and was one volume in the major wave of utopian and dystopian writing that distinguished the later nineteenth century.
A Prophetic Romance: Mars to Earth is an 1896 utopian novel written by John McCoy, and published pseudonymously as the work of "The Lord Commissioner," the narrator of the tale. The book is one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Moving the Mountain is a feminist utopian novel written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was published serially in Perkins Gilman's periodical The Forerunner and then in book form, both in 1911. The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that marked the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The novel was also the first volume in Gilman's utopian trilogy; it was followed by the famous Herland (1915) and its sequel, With Her in Ourland (1916).
The New Paul and Virginia, or Positivism on an Island is a satirical dystopian novel written by William Hurrell Mallock, and first published in 1878. It belongs to the wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the later nineteenth century in both Great Britain and the United States.
The Scarlet Empire is a dystopian novel written by David MacLean Parry, a political satire first published in 1906. The book was one item in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
David MacLean Parry was an American industrialist and writer.
Anna Bowman Dodd was an American author from New York. Her first book was Cathedral Days, and her second The Republic of the Future, was also successful. She published novels, such as Glorinda, as well as a book on Normandy, In and Out of Three Normandy Inns. She wrote short stories, essays and a series of articles on church music. After Dodd wrote a paper on the Concord School of Philosophy for Appleton's Magazine, English journals copied it, a French translation was reprinted in Émile Littré's Revue Philosophique, and the author found her services in growing demand. She was engaged by Harper's Magazine in 1881 to furnish an exhaustive article on the political leaders of France, which she prepared for by going to France, in order to study the subject more closely. The paper's editor, Henry Mills Alden, pronounced it as 'the most brilliant article of the kind we have had in ten years'. Before returning to the U.S., she visited Rome and prepared a description of the carnival for Harper's. Dodd died in 1929.
The Republic of the Future public domain audiobook at LibriVox 