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Wells
1905
A philosophical essay that keeps breaking into a story — Wells's argument for a Utopia that never stops changing.
A Modern Utopia
H. G. Wells · 1905
Wells wrote this in 1905 as a deliberate departure from the utopian tradition of Thomas More and Edward Bellamy: instead of a finished, static perfection, he wanted a Utopia that was 'kinetic' — a world still moving, still capable of getting things wrong. He builds it through an odd, admitted hybrid of form: philosophical argument constantly interrupted by the travels of an unnamed narrator and his heartbroken botanist companion through a parallel Earth reached across the void between worlds. At its center is Wells's most contested idea, the Samurai — a voluntary order of the able and disciplined who govern not by birth or wealth but by submitting to a written Rule. A century before terms like 'meritocracy' were common currency, Wells is already arguing with himself about who should hold power, and on what grounds.
14 chapters · 92,773 words · ~7 hr read
Contents
Note and Introduction
Wells's own note on his method, followed by the narrator's introduction of himself as the 'Owner of the Voice.'
The Shape of Utopia
The narrator and the botanist cross into a parallel-world Utopia and Wells lays out its geography, its freedoms, and its economics.
Living in Utopia
What nature, failure, women's lives, and everyday impressions look like inside the World State — and the narrator meets his Utopian double.
Who Governs
The Samurai and their voluntary Rule, the question of race in a single World State, and the journey's abrupt end as the bubble bursts.
Appendix
Wells's 1903 philosophical paper 'Scepticism of the Instrument,' the argument about language and thought underlying the book's method.