That is an interesting question. The 1840s were an incredibly weird time. It was a crossroads. It was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Class identification and geographical identification suddenly became uncertain, that was upsetting. There were also an explosion of religious sects at this time, with the disestablishment of state and church. I think it was a time when people felt very vulnerable. All these changes and uncertainties crystallized attempts to live otherwise. In the wake of the American Revolution over a hundred experimental communities were formed in the United States. Do societies become less experimental as they age into their institutions? Is the West losing the audacity necessary for experimentation? Hythloday concludes (finally!) by saying that executing thieves just looks like justice, but it isn't and it doesn't work. He says it's just like blaming a child for being bad if his parents raised him poorly. Reorganizing the role of sex and reproduction in society is one of the big themes of Brave New World and many real life utopian societies. Why is that? And what role did sex play in Oneida?

The word means ‘no place,’ a place that does not exist. So ‘utopia’, from Thomas More’s time onwards, is a place that is predicated on invention.After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Utopia generally refers to a positive program for organizing society, but the way they typically envision organizing is either impractical or improbable so utopias usually fail. Utopias help us index and critique contemporary social conditions; they open our eyes to the ways in which current ways of organizing are narrow or biased. There are the usual bunch of sneaky recommendations from other advisors: increase the value of money when the king pays his debts and devalue it when he collects, invent a war (those always make money), invent some laws that everyone is breaking and collect a bunch of fines, make new laws preventing certain activities unless you pay up big time, pay off the judges so that they always rule in the interest of the king.... While he's there, he sees his good old friend Peter Giles, an incredibly smart guy, chatting with an intriguing-looking stranger. At this point, Hythloday interrupts and explains that executing robbers is a terrible way of controlling robbery. People steal when they're desperate, not because they're cunning master criminals. If you want people to stop stealing, you need to give them the means to take care of themselves.

Bregman shows that we can construct a society with visionary ideas that are, in fact, wholly implementable. Every milestone of civilization – from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy – was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a 15-hour work week can become reality in our lifetime. For suspense-filled, post-apocalyptic thrillers, Wool is more than a self-published ebook phenomenon―it’s the new standard in classic science fiction. Fun factoid: More is referring to Plato's Republic, a famous work of Greek philosophy which imagined a perfect state ruled by philosopher kings. More's Utopia is actually modeled on this text, which some people consider to be proto-Utopian. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

But, More says, shouldn't someone so interested in philosophy want to do some good, even if he doesn't like it? He could help all those princes and kings be better by giving them good advice and sharing wisdom. Published in 1888, Bellamy’s novel imagining a perfect future society spawned a nationwide movement in America. (It also predicted electronic broadcasting and credit cards.) Bellamy’s plan for a ‘cloud palace for an ideal humanity’ also helped to inspire the garden city movement in the US and the UK. Here, our narrator, More, describes Hythloday's story. Hythloday's direct narration isn't recorded until a little later (don't worry, we'll give you a heads up). Thrilling and timeless, Lost Horizon is a masterpiece of modern fiction, and one of the most enduring classics of the twentieth century. The Cardinal gets a bit nervous since this fool just made fun of the church and one of his guests is a friar. But the friar thinks the joke is hilarious (phew!) and even makes fun of himself, saying the friars can be like beggars sometimes too.And it's not like noblemen do anything all day. In fact, the only reason they get to sit around is because they have a bunch of people slaving away for them... not terribly enabling. Even though these various countries have some nifty ship technology, Hythloday really impresses them by showing off his compass. It's just completely unfair, Hythloday insists, to take someone's life because they took someone's money. "Thou shalt not kill" is one of the Ten Commandments, so why are we doing it all the time? It seems like a can of worms; if killing becomes legal, what's next: rape, adultery? God gets to make laws, not people. The laws of Moses are severe, but fair, so let's emulate that. More explains that while Raphael was sailing with Vespucci, he and a few other men asked if they could stay behind as a garrison in some vague, far-away place. Yeah, More is often vague.

Hythloday thinks that the compass has made a big difference in the traveling abilities of these countries, but he's also a bit worried that this invention might lead them into mischief. After hearing about how many different experiences Hythloday had while visiting other governments and countries, Giles asks him why he doesn't go work for a prince, put all his knowledge to good use, and help out his friends and family by getting to know someone in high places (wink wink). Among the things satirised by Butler in this book is the rise of the machines, which Butler argues will evolve at an ever-faster rate – along the lines of Darwinian evolution – until the machines eventually overtake humans. A fool, who had been standing around being mostly silly but sometimes clever, replied that he was all over that since the poor never bother him because he never has anything to give them—just like priests (ouch!). He then suggests that all the poor be sent to monasteries to help out the monks there. The island was originally a peninsula but a 15-mile wide channel was dug by the community's founder King Utopos to separate it from the mainland. The island contains 54 cities. Each city is divided into four equal parts. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle of the crescent island.On to Brave New World, first published in 1931. It is a book on many reading lists; why is it on your list? More seems to contemplate the duty of philosophers to work around and in real situations and, for the sake of political expediency, work within flawed systems to make them better, rather than hoping to start again from first principles. Apparently, Hythloday has lots of other interesting things to say, but More explains that there just isn't time to repeat it all. Oneida’s founder, John Humphrey Noyes, had a classical education at Dartmouth. As an undergraduate he trained in law; then he got his divinity license from Yale Theological Seminary. So he would’ve been versed in biblical scholarship, including Augustine.