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krdavis02's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
lorenzobc's review against another edition
4.0
this novel is at the top of the list of books we studied in “The Utopia and Dystopian Novel” with Pamela Bedore. When it came out in 1888, it not only became a best-seller rivaled only by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Ben Hur”, but it also led to the creation of “Bellamy Clubs” all over the US where people discussing the novel’s utopian themes could work together to materialize the novel’s vision for a communitarian nationalization. I took my sweet time with this one in order to appreciate just how thought-provoking the vision for a world where time as opposed to money becomes the means of exchange in order to retain egalitarianism.
metaphorosis's review against another edition
3.0
Looking Backward is more of a socio-economic treatise than a novel. Each chapter essentially picks a point or two (labor, say) and explains how if we only did such and such, utopia would result. That's no surprise - that's pretty much what it says on the back cover. The surprise is that despite this strong concentration of analysis, the framing works surprisingly well. The protagonist, Julian West, comes across as an interesting fellow, and if his coming romance is not exactly a surprise, it's still warm and nice.
The book is hampered, of course, by being viewed from a post-Soviet vantage. We've seen a version of what Bellamy predicted, and it didn't work. To be fair, Bellamy might not have been very much in favor of what the Soviets actually achieved, but it's the closest thing we've seen to what he proposed (the current Chinese model is moving away from his views, not toward them).
The main failing of the book is its overly rosy view of human nature. Bellamy takes pains to argue that his proposals work because they play to self interest, but too many of the details are glossed over. The incentives that he does describe complicate the simple system that he started out to describe. I'm more idealistic than most, and I enjoyed the concepts Bellamy lays out. It's fun to think about, but hindsight makes me sceptical that any of it would actually work, or that it would be a good idea. There simply aren't adequate safeguards built in against corruption.
Bellamy takes his best shot at acknowledging and addressing the stumbling blocks. The hardest ones, of course, are the ones he doesn't know are there. On the question of gender (which he leaves so late that I feared he wouldn't address it at all), he goes not for 'separate but equal', but for 'separate and it's amazing how much those little women accomplish'. The question of race (which enters through his 1887 'colored' servant), doesn't get a mention in the analysis.
All in all, I was surprised at Bellamy's literary skill (I liked the initial analogy of society as a coach pulled by the poor, with the rich ever at risk of sliding out of their high seats), and this was a book worth reading. I don't see reading the sequel, but I do expect to try some of his more literary work, to see if his style holds up when he's writing about less serious issues.
Also - he offers a sort-of preview of the (ebook) self-publishing industry. Not very close, but still interesting.
The book is hampered, of course, by being viewed from a post-Soviet vantage. We've seen a version of what Bellamy predicted, and it didn't work. To be fair, Bellamy might not have been very much in favor of what the Soviets actually achieved, but it's the closest thing we've seen to what he proposed (the current Chinese model is moving away from his views, not toward them).
The main failing of the book is its overly rosy view of human nature. Bellamy takes pains to argue that his proposals work because they play to self interest, but too many of the details are glossed over. The incentives that he does describe complicate the simple system that he started out to describe. I'm more idealistic than most, and I enjoyed the concepts Bellamy lays out. It's fun to think about, but hindsight makes me sceptical that any of it would actually work, or that it would be a good idea. There simply aren't adequate safeguards built in against corruption.
Bellamy takes his best shot at acknowledging and addressing the stumbling blocks. The hardest ones, of course, are the ones he doesn't know are there. On the question of gender (which he leaves so late that I feared he wouldn't address it at all), he goes not for 'separate but equal', but for 'separate and it's amazing how much those little women accomplish'. The question of race (which enters through his 1887 'colored' servant), doesn't get a mention in the analysis.
All in all, I was surprised at Bellamy's literary skill (I liked the initial analogy of society as a coach pulled by the poor, with the rich ever at risk of sliding out of their high seats), and this was a book worth reading. I don't see reading the sequel, but I do expect to try some of his more literary work, to see if his style holds up when he's writing about less serious issues.
Also - he offers a sort-of preview of the (ebook) self-publishing industry. Not very close, but still interesting.
veiltender's review against another edition
I really like this book, for all of its tendentiousness and sometimes naivety. It is such an optimistic vision that I cannot fault it.
gene_poole's review against another edition
2.0
If you love dreadful Victorian writing, and outdated visionary futures, you could do no better than this. Bellamy weaves a fantasy Boston where utterly boring men talk about the labor problem, distribution of wealth and social roles. I didn’t reach the sexy parts before I began to hit myself on the head with my 1890s edition in order to stay awake. For a more adventurous future try The Sleeper Awakes by HGWells. Seemingly derived from Bellamy, it is remarkably awful, too. Inventing a future unlike the contemporary industrial West of the time, occupied the time of some big minds, but don’t let that fool you, these novels will bore you out of yours, I predict.
lorinlee's review against another edition
5.0
Bellamy's LB is a late nineteenth century (1887) look at an imagined future. Written during the so-called Gilded Age, it posits a coming era devoid of the class conflicts and wealth disparity which divided the US at the time. It is a utopian novel and it is not literary fiction. There are clumps of dialogue which today we would call "reader feeder"---and it's in these bits and in the internals of Julian West who awakes after more than a century "asleep." Every topic of the day is treated and some of Bellamy's notions about the coming age are quite on-target. Well worth the read, despite sometimes clunky writing. The book, after all, spawned a short-lived social movement, an organization which aimed to bring about the changes Bellamy predicted.
ladyday540's review against another edition
2.0
I understand that this book has historical and literary significance, and I appreciate the way in which Bellamy both implicates his time (and, refreshingly, himself) AND sees within that time a ground for revolution. But not even my affection for 19th century sentimentality and precursors to modern genre fiction can make up for the fact that this book was moralizing and monotonous. Not to mention that a society organized as an army, in which small groups of "fit" individuals make decisions for everyone else and cultural normalization is the basis for social stability, is not my idea of a utopia. Side note: it's called fascism.
jdvough's review against another edition
2.0
A bit of a bait and switch for me. Referred in another work as one of the first time-travel science fiction novels, it really was, instead, a treatise on the merits of socialism and the perils of capitalism. I already sort of agreed with the premises so it was preaching to the choir and it was a lot of preaching. Written in the late 19th century, the protagonist travels to the 20th century to find the world is a lot more egalitarian. I was looking forward to the time travel aspect and actually think the very idea of speculative fiction from that time period, like that done by H.G. Wells, is interesting to compare to actually reality. This books glosses over the mechanism of said time travel, and is really an essay on socialism disguised as a thinly veiled science fiction-ish allegory.
divide's review against another edition
4.0
I'm even more of a socialist now after reading this book. One thing that's very dated and almost made me put it down is its view on women, but that can be perhaps explained by when it was written. Feminism has fortunately progressed quite a lot more than politics or equality in the hundred years since.