#Literature #Fantasy #FairyTale
If one considers political science as the scientific background against which the fantastic claims plausibility, utopian fiction is the first tributary of the river of science fiction. By examining key works, such as Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and William Morris’s News from Nowhere, we can see that utopianism has developed in four large historic movements corresponding to changing conditions of material production and religious belief. In the 20th century, the grim archetypal utopia is Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, a critique not only of the Soviet state but of the relentless mechanization of society. Like all fictional utopias, it is less a practical blueprint than a philosophical challenge. Artistically, that challenge was engaged by such works as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.

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