origin of utopian literature in english

• 1516 - sir thomas moore’s utopia
  • framed narrative cribbed from atlantis, which was not well known at the time, and repainted to fit the english fascination with the mysteries of new world cultures
  • split into two parts, first a commentary on the ills of society, the second a commentary on its solutions
  • neither commentary is particularly serious at first glance, much of it is direct parody of contemporary politics
  • the political thrust of the book is in the contrast between parody and polemic, often rendered by an interlocutor questioning the meaning or rationale behind quirks of utopian society
  • written in court latin, and too convoluted for adaption into a play, not widely read until the 18th century
• 1626 - sir francis bacon’s (yes that one) new atlantis
  • published as an appendix to a compilation of bacon’s attempt at a universal history. a “universal history” is a premodern history of the world produced as one author’s interpretation of theology, myth, history, scientific knowledge, and magic. compare to: ibn khaldun’s muqaddimah, sir walter raleigh’s history of the world
  • in contrast to his history of the world as it is, bacon gives a portrayal of the world as it could be
  • weaker frame narrative than utopia, written more like an ethnography, with elders telling stories about their society and how it arose
  • source of most english “utopian” tropes eg
    • remote society is inexplicably christian
    • scientific pursuit leads to a more stable and peaceful society
    • utopia is concealed from the outside world but still knows of it
    • total state socialism and aristocratic trappings somehow coexist
    • mankind has risen above war somehow
    • let’s just not talk about that slavery thing
  • while no one remembers bacon’s universal history, this was very widely read, and quickly republished
  • “utopian literature” of the 17th and 18th century is mostly the same narrative redressed to deliver a different political point relevant to current events. many altered versions of the text exists for different political groups

the industrial and scientific revolutions happen. sort of. not like you think

• the industrial revolution as a concept is something that was not widely recognized in the anglosphere until the mid-20th century. in the early 19th century industrialization and technological developments were mostly seen as means to imperial expansion, a gradual and political act. certainly not one done to change the lives of the people in an empire.
• contemporary sources in the late 18th and early 19th century do marvel at new technology, often in the context of military propaganda, but no single project is deemed to signal a revolution or drastic change in society. this is especially true of steam engines, which developed much slower than you probably think, and at the time were understood to be incremental upgrades to existing infrastructure in factories and mines. important perspective: the span of time between the development of practical steam locomotives and the very first real railway service was about 40 years.
  • developments that were praised as revolutionary are things like systematic postal addressing and methods to synchronize clocks on ships
• in general, english-speaking people in this era did not conceive of any technology as something that could cause major changes to society or the natural order of life on its own. in fact, both colloquial and academic belief was that the natural order of the world was fixed by god. this is not even a concept up for debate until the 1860s. (contrast this to modern conception that technology dominates the natural order and change in technology is by definition revolutionary)
• charles darwin pissed a lot of people off. not really because evolution was a novel concept (topic for later) but because he ran a whole pr campaign for it and got into arguments with about every life sciences author at the time. very few people in the british intelligentsia had read wallace or lamarck, but everyone and their mother read darwin. coffee houses would keep copies of “on the origin of species” as status symbols.
• the major objection to darwin’s work at the time is about the mere idea that species could “transmute” (ie differentiation of distinct species intersects with evolutionary paths, the ability to gain new traits was already established) or go extinct without divine intervention. all the stuff about human origins comes later. (1880s mostly)
• roughly at the same time, babbage’s work on advanced calculators becomes commonly known. mechanical calculators are already commonplace by 1860 and this is not considered much of a breakthrough technology.
• need to remember all of these people are crazy. half of them believe that magnets are powered by ghosts and that there are biblically accurate angels walking around iraq. everyone’s blasted on way too much coffee and opium and they have dance parties where they fill the room with nitrous until they pass out. in america people are doing occult rituals to try to make themselves more racist. it was a bizarre time in history not unlike our own.

samuel butler - the agi panic of 1872

• butler is even more of a weirdo than the average 19th century author. mf lost his life savings spending it on a twink’s onlyfans because he thought they were dating. he published a bunch of pamphlets saying he had developed the one true pantheism (but dont call it that, he hates that name). he’s an absolutely ridiculous contrarian on all fronts, his life is tragic but really funny and his writing and philosophy largely reflects that.
• when this guy read “on the origin of species” he immediately sent a pseudonymous letter to his local newspaper claiming that machines were evolving faster than human beings and would overtake us as the dominant species soon. he claims this was intended as a joke about 18th century moral philosophy. no one got it but it was still funny. the newspaper ran it and it became a local topic of discussion for a while.
• butler is most remembered for the utopian novel erewhon, in which he develops the machine evolution concept into a central premise. erewhon is a legitimately very funny take on utopian fiction, which up until that point had mostly been thinly veiled political polemic. erewhon doesn’t really have a point to make at all, it is more like a gallery of strange sights and charicature, and butler tries his best to subvert every trope of the genre. despite this, and the author’s intent, it is much more influential on politics and academia than anything it is parodying.
  • in erewhon a man hastily decides to go to a backwater english colony hoping to become a landowner. he is instead employed watching sheep all day. bored out of his mind, he decides to climb a goddamn mountain.
  • the man is not very good at mountain climbing. his guide leaves him for dead, he fucks up his legs falling, and nearly freezes to death.
  • he reaches utopian society and has no idea how to speak to them. he quickly decides they are a lost tribe of israel and therefore jews. he is taken to a judge and sentenced to prison for the crime of having a pocket watch.
  • everything in the society is deliberately obtuse, wealth is horsepower, being sick is a crime, time is all fucked up, science is focused on things that don’t actually exist
  • the academy is very powerful yet does nothing of value, and in fact it appears that the purpose of education is to waste the time and energy of the intellectual class
  • it’s all very silly and the author eventually snaps and escapes with a girl he met
• the “book of machines” in erewhon continues the machine evolution bit. that’s short enough i can just read most of it aloud.
• this text was immediately popular and threw butler, a largely unknown author, into the spotlight of debates around industrialization and darwinism. if you recall, in the 1860s and 1870s there were some uh events transpiring that had made people question the role of religion and industry in western society.
• … lasting impact etc

edward bellamy - american technoutopian politics

• bellamy was an american journalist, briefly with the new york post and later with the springfield union. he was an aspiring novelist, writing many works of early science fiction, none of which are particlarly good. in fact, overall, he’s not a great or compelling writer, which makes his legacy rather interesting.