by definition, utopia cannot exist. In 1516, educated readers of Thomas More’s Utopia would have appreciated the tension between two possible etymologies of this novel word: the Greek “eu-topos”, meaning good place, and “ou-topos”, meaning no place at all. It might have been a brief warning that one should never attempt to turn utopia into reality. Those who have tried have generally seen the ideal societies they founded devolve into disgustingly dysfunctional communities, strange sex cults, or both.
In this widely divergent intellectual history of thought, we begin, as we should, with the idiosyncratic prescriptions of Plato and his Republic (“We must neutralize the influence of poets on mothers”). By remaining silent on potentially utopian aspects of Jesus’ thinking, we arrive at More’s utopia, where “nothing is private”, and therefore “common matters should be viewed honestly”. The great Renaissance scientist Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis portrays a utopia of rational scientific experimentation – which, Wren casually suggests, may have inspired Wakanda in the Marvel Black Panther films. In The Blazing World of the 17th-century Duchess Margaret Cavendish, the author is imagined as a goddess chosen by a world of science-loving human-animal hybrids. In the 18th century, Sarah Scott’s Millenium (sic) Hall imagined an ideal society of women without men, as did Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland during World War I.
Some patterns emerge: many utopias use a framing device in which the narrator is accidentally or fantastically transported to a new land, and is then subjected to an explanatory monologue about how it all works. Families are often broken up, with children raised together. And in Edward Bellamy’s 1888 fantasy Looking Backward, Wren pointedly states, “There are no law schools or lawyers here, as in most utopias, which have been abolished”.
However, families are permitted in Voyage en Icarie by 19th-century French socialist Étienne Cabet, who envisions a rigidly organized communism. In 1849 Cabet founded his own model society, Icaria, in Illinois. Alas, after a few years, “Cabinet’s citizens were accumulating wealth; they indulged in vices, including hunting and fishing, swearing, tobacco and alcohol; women wore makeup, jewelery and perfume.” Cabret’s solution to this embarrassing situation was to insist on even stricter rules and make himself president “for four years instead of one.” Similarly, utopia always threatens to turn into dictatorship.
Again, it is strange that Wren never mentions a famous reckoning with the concept of utopia. In 1974, American political philosopher Robert Nozick published Anarchy, the State, and Utopia, which argued that the only morally acceptable state is a “minimalist” that guarantees property rights and security, and enforces contracts. People should be free to form any type of association they like, as long as there is never pressure for membership. But for Nozick, utopias are always coercive because not everyone will freely agree to their values. Nozick writes, “It’s useful to imagine cavemen sitting together thinking about what the best possible society of all time would be and then doing what it takes to establish it.” “Doesn’t any of the reasons you smile about this apply to us?”
Many of the features of utopia in Wren’s illustrious list are, ultimately, tragic. In Gilman’s Moving the Mountain, “There are almost no pets, because they are useless.” In Voyage en Icari, “the decorative prints are full of useful information, unlike the redundant landscape paintings.” Victorian artist William Morris, in News from Nowhere, describes the natural nobility of his society, an elite “samurai” class, who “must not act or sing…they cannot play or watch competitive sports.”
But since utopias are primarily “biological machines for thinking about the premises of our thought”, Wren argues, they are like science fiction – and some are indeed science fiction. He mentions here the “anarchist utopia” of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed of the 1970s, but perhaps the most popular type of utopian fiction over the past few decades has been the epic series of Culture novels by Iain M Banks, which present fully automated luxury communism in space amidst a pan-galactic society of augmented humans.
Yet, things regularly go awry in this ideal society, from attacks by intolerant fanatics to rogue AI utilitarianism or impractically ancient alien artifacts. So even the best utopian fiction ends up being anti-utopian; At its highest level of practice, perhaps, utopia disappears into the great flow of literature itself.
