A Modern Utopia

A Modern Utopia
	Cover of the first edition
Author	H. G. Wells
Country	England
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Chapman and Hall
Publication date	April 1905 (serialized in the Fortnightly Review, October 1904-April 1905)
Media type	Print
Pages	393

Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure, A Modern Utopia has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia."[1] The novel is best known for its notion that a voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively rule a "kinetic and not static" world state[2] so as to solve "the problem of combining progress with political stability".[3]

A Modern Utopia is a 1905 novel by H. G. Wells.

Conception of the work

In his preface Wells forecasts (incorrectly) that A Modern Utopia would be the last of a series of volumes on social problems that he began in 1901 with Anticipations and that included Mankind in the Making (1903). Unlike those non-fictional works, A Modern Utopia is presented as a tale told by a sketchily described character known only as the Owner of the Voice, who, Wells warns the reader, "is not to be taken as the Voice of the ostensible author who fathers these pages".[4] He is accompanied by another character known as "the botanist". Interspersed into the narrative are discursive remarks on various matters, creating what Wells calls in his preface "a sort of shot-silk texture between philosophical discussion on the one hand and imaginative narrative on the other.".[5] In addition, there are frequent comparisons to and discussions of previous utopian works.[6]

In his Experiment in Autobiography (1934) Wells wrote that A Modern Utopia "was the first approach I made to the dialogue form", and that "the trend towards dialogue, like the basal notion of the Samurai, marks my debt to Plato. A Modern Utopia, quite as much as that of More, derives frankly from the Republic."[7]

The premise of the novel is that there is a planet (for "No less than a planet will serve the purpose of a modern Utopia"[8]) exactly like Earth, with the same geography and biology. Moreover, on that planet "all the men and women that you know and I" exist "in duplicate".[9] They have, however, "different habits, different traditions, different knowledge, different ideas, different clothing, and different appliances."[10] (Not however, a different language: "Indeed, should we be in Utopia at all, if we could not talk to everyone?").[11]

Plot

To this planet "out beyond Sirius"[12] the Owner of the Voice and the botanist are translated, imaginatively, "in the twinkling of an eye . . . We should scarcely note the change. Not a cloud would have gone from the sky."[13] Their point of entry is on the slopes of the Piz Lucendro in the Swiss Alps.

The adventures of these two characters are traced through eleven chapters. Little by little they discover how Utopia is organized. It is a world with "no positive compulsions at all . . . for the adult Utopian—unless they fall upon him as penalties incurred."[14]

The Owner of the Voice and the botanist are soon required to account for their presence. When their thumbprints are checked against records in "the central index housed in a vast series of buildings at or near Paris,"[15] both discover they have doubles in Utopia. They journey to London to meet them, and the Owner of the Voice's double is a member of the Samurai, a voluntary order of nobility that rules Utopia. "These samurai form the real body of the State."[16]

Running through the novel as a foil to the main narrative is the botanist's obsession with an unhappy love affair back on Earth. The Owner of the Voice is annoyed at this undignified and unworthy insertion of earthly affairs in Utopia, but when the botanist meets the double of his beloved in Utopia the violence of his reaction bursts the imaginative bubble that has sustained the narrative and the two men find themselves back in early twentieth-century London.[17]

Utopian economics

The world shares the same language, coinage, customs, and laws, and freedom of movement is general.[18] Some personal property is allowed, but "all natural sources of force, and indeed all strictly natural products" are "inalienably vested in the local authorities" occupying "areas as large sometimes as half England."[19] The World State is "the sole landowner of the earth."[20] Units of currency are based on units of energy, so that "employment would constantly shift into the areas where energy was cheap."[21] Humanity has been almost entirely liberated from the need for physical labor: "There appears to be no limit to the invasion of life by the machine."[22]

The samurai and Utopian society

The narrator's double describes the ascetic Rule by which the samurai live: it includes a ban on alcohol and drugs, and a mandatory annual one-week solitary ramble in the wilderness. He also explains the social theory of Utopia, which distinguished four "main classes of mind": The Poietic, the Kinetic, the Dull, and the Base.[23] Poietic minds are creative or inventive; kinetic minds are able but not particularly inventive; the Dull have "inadequate imagination,"[24] and the Base are mired in egotism and lack "moral sense."[25]

The relations of the sexes

There is extensive discussion of gender roles in A Modern Utopia, but no recognition of the existence of homosexuality. A chapter entitled "Women in a Modern Utopia" makes it clear that women are to be as free as men. Motherhood is subsidized by the state. Only those who can support themselves can marry, women at 21 and men at 26 or 27.[26] Marriages that remain childless "expire" after a term of three to five years, but the partners may marry again if they choose.[27]

Race in Utopia

A Modern Utopia is also notable for Chapter 10 ("Race in Utopia"), an enlightened discussion of race. Contemporary racialist discourse is condemned as crude, ignorant, and extravagant. "For my own part I am disposed to discount all adverse judgments and all statements of insurmountable differences between race and race."[28]

Meat

The narrator is told, "In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And, in a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughter-house".[29]

Origins

The work was partly inspired by a trip to the Alps Wells made with his friend Graham Wallas, a prominent member of the Fabian Society.

Reception

Several Samurai societies were formed in response to A Modern Utopia, and Wells met members of one of them in April 1907 at the New Reform Club.[30]

At a memorial service at the Royal Institution on 30 October 1946, two and a half months after Wells's death, William Beveridge read passages from the book and called it the work that had influenced him the most.[31]

According to Vincent Brome, Wells's first comprehensive biographer after his death, it was widely read by university students and "released hundreds of young people into sexual adventure."[32] W. Warren Wagar praised it, describing it and Wells's other utopian novels (Men Like Gods and The Shape of Things to Come) as "landmarks in that extraordinarily difficult genre".[33]

Joseph Conrad complained to Wells that he did not "take sufficient account of human imbecility, which is cunning and perfidious."[34]

E.M. Forster satirised what he regarded as the book's unhealthy conformism in his science-fiction story "The Machine Stops", first published only four years later, in 1909.[1]

Marie-Louise Berneri was also critical of the book, stating that "Wells commits the faults of his forerunners by introducing a vast amount of legislation into his utopia" and that "Wells's conception of freedom turns out to be a very narrow one".[35] Wells's biographer Michael Sherborne criticizes the book for depicting "an undemocratic one-party state" in which truth is established not by critical discussion but by shared faith.

References

Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 165.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 75. Wells first introduces the term "World State" three pages earlier, in §1 of Ch. 3. The notion of a samurai order was suggested to him by Nitobe Inazo's Bushido (1900). Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Sort of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 165.
Introduction by Mark R. Hillegas to new ed. of H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 271 (Ch. 9, §3).
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 1.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. xxxii.
Wells read Plato's Republic in the early 1880s and was deeply marked, even radicalized, by it. Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), pp. 50-51. Plato is often discussed in A Modern Utopia, but so is almost every other major work in the western utopian tradition.
H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (1934), 562
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 11.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 25.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 23.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 17.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 12.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 14.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 34.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 163.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 277.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 358.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 45.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 77.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 89.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 79.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 98.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 265.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 268.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), pp. 269-70.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 192.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 196.
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 334.
Wells, H. G. (1905). "9". A Modern Utopia. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 101.
David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 484.
Vincent Brome, H.G. Wells: A Biography (London: Longsman, Green, 1951), p. 96.
Wager, W. Warren. "Wells, H(erbert) G(eorge)", in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers by Curtis C. Smith. St. James Press, 1986, ISBN 0-912289-27-9 (p.779-83).
David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 100.
Marie-Louise Berneri, Journey through Utopia, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950. (p. 295)

Bibliography

Deery, June. "H.G. Wells's A Modern Utopia as a Work in Progress." Extrapolation (Kent State University Press). 34.3 (1993): 216–229. EBSCO Host. Salem State College Library Databases. Salem, Massachusetts. 18 April 2008.
"H.G. Wells." The Literature Network. 1 2000–2008. 18 April 2008.
McLean, Steven. ""The Fertilising Conflict of Individualities": H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia, John Stuart Mill's on Liberty, and the..." Papers on Language and Literature. 2 2007. 166. eLibrary. Proquest CSA. Salem State College Library Databases. Salem, Massachusetts. 18 April 2008.
Review: [untitled], by A. W. S. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 3 (November 1905), pp. 430–431. Published by: The University of Chicago Press. JSTOR. Salem State College Library Databases. Salem, Massachusetts. 18 April 2008.
Review: [untitled], by C. M. H. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 9 (November 1906), pp. 581–582. Published by: The University of Chicago Press. JSTOR. Salem State College Library Databases. Salem, Massachusetts. 18 April 2008.
Wells, H.G. A Modern Utopia. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 2005.

External links

A Modern Utopia at Project Gutenberg
A Modern Utopia public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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[Michael_Sherborne_2010_p._165-1] Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 165.

[2] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 75. Wells first introduces the term "World State" three pages earlier, in §1 of Ch. 3. The notion of a samurai order was suggested to him by Nitobe Inazo's Bushido (1900). Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Sort of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 165.

[3] Introduction by Mark R. Hillegas to new ed. of H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 271 (Ch. 9, §3).

[4] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 1.

[5] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. xxxii.

[6] Wells read Plato's Republic in the early 1880s and was deeply marked, even radicalized, by it. Michael Sherborne, H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (Peter Owen, 2010), pp. 50-51. Plato is often discussed in A Modern Utopia, but so is almost every other major work in the western utopian tradition.

[7] H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (1934), 562

[8] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 11.

[9] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 25.

[10] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 23.

[11] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 17.

[12] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 12.

[13] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 14.

[14] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 34.

[15] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 163.

[16] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 277.

[17] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 358.

[18] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 45.

[19] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 77.

[20] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 89.

[21] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 79.

[22] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 98.

[23] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 265.

[24] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 268.

[25] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), pp. 269-70.

[26] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 192.

[27] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 196.

[28] H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 334.

[AModernUtopia-29] Wells, H. G. (1905). "9". A Modern Utopia. Retrieved 8 May 2014.

[30] David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 101.

[31] David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 484.

[32] Vincent Brome, H.G. Wells: A Biography (London: Longsman, Green, 1951), p. 96.

[33] Wager, W. Warren. "Wells, H(erbert) G(eorge)", in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers by Curtis C. Smith. St. James Press, 1986, ISBN 0-912289-27-9 (p.779-83).

[34] David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 100.

[35] Marie-Louise Berneri, Journey through Utopia, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950. (p. 295)

H. G. Wells
Bibliography
Novels	The Time Machine (1895) The Wonderful Visit (1895) The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) The Wheels of Chance (1896) The Invisible Man (1897) The War of the Worlds (1898) When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) Love and Mr Lewisham (1900) The First Men in the Moon (1901) The Sea Lady (1902) The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) Kipps (1905) A Modern Utopia (1905) In the Days of the Comet (1906) The War in the Air (1908) Tono-Bungay (1909) Ann Veronica (1909) The History of Mr Polly (1910) The Sleeper Awakes (1910) The New Machiavelli (1911) Marriage (1912) The Passionate Friends (1913) The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914) The World Set Free (1914) Bealby: A Holiday (1915) Boon (1915) The Research Magnificent (1915) Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916) The Soul of a Bishop (1917) Joan and Peter: The Story of an Education (1918) The Undying Fire (1919) The Secret Places of the Heart (1922) Men Like Gods (1923) The Dream (1924) Christina Alberta's Father (1925) The World of William Clissold (1926) Meanwhile (1927) Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928) The Autocracy of Mr. Parham (1930) The Bulpington of Blup (1932) The Shape of Things to Come (1933) The Croquet Player (1936) Brynhild (1937) Star Begotten (1937) The Camford Visitation (1937) Apropos of Dolores (1938) The Brothers (1938) The Holy Terror (1939) Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940) All Aboard for Ararat (1940) You Can't Be Too Careful (1941)
Nonfiction	Anticipations Certain Personal Matters Crux Ansata The Discovery of the Future An Englishman Looks at the World Experiment in Autobiography The Fate of Man First and Last Things Floor Games The Future in America: A Search After Realities God the Invisible King In the Fourth Year Little Wars Mankind in the Making Mind at the End of Its Tether Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History" The New America: The New World The New World Order New Worlds for Old The Open Conspiracy The Outline of History Russia in the Shadows The Science of Life A Short History of the World The Story of a Great Schoolmaster This Misery of Boots Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water War and the Future The Way the World is Going The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind World Brain A Year of Prophesying
Collections	The Country of the Blind and Other Stories The Plattner Story and Others Select Conversations with an Uncle The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents Tales of Space and Time Twelve Stories and a Dream
Short stories	"Æpyornis Island" "The Argonauts of the Air" "The Beautiful Suit" "The Chronic Argonauts" "The Cone" "The Country of the Blind" "The Crystal Egg" "A Deal in Ostriches" "The Diamond Maker" "A Dream of Armageddon" "The Empire of the Ants" "In the Abyss" "The Land Ironclads" "Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation" "The Lord of the Dynamos" "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" "The New Accelerator" "The Pearl of Love" "The Plattner Story" "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper" "The Red Room" "The Sea Raiders" "The Star" "The Stolen Body" "A Story of the Days to Come" "A Story of the Stone Age" "Triumphs of a Taxidermist" "The Truth About Pyecraft" "A Vision of Judgment"
Screenplays	Things to Come (1936) The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937)
Related	Political views G. P. Wells (son) Anthony West (son) Joseph Wells (father) Simon Wells (great-grandson) H. G. Wells Society Lunar crater Time After Time (1979 film)