#95 - Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

COMMUNIST UTOPIAS!!!

Ok.

Our hero is a young aristocratic Bostonian on the verge of his marriage in the late 1800's. He falls asleep in a special chamber he's built under his house so that the city noises don't wake him up (he's such a light sleeper!). Well, his house burns down and his servant is killed in the blaze. The chamber is forgotten for a century, and our poor hero is left to rot in it.

Only... he doesn't.

He is put into such a deep slumber by the quiet of his chamber that he enters a trance like state where his body doesn't decay. Lo' and behold, he awakes in the year 2000 alive and well (minus the jet lag).

That's the first chapter or two -- the rest of the book is his discourse with a Dr. Leete.

Apparently, society has followed a "natural" progression from the capitalist economies of Edward Bellamy's time to what is now a huge communist utopia. No, not Soviet communists; that's spelled Communists.

Honestly, I didn't feel like finishing the book, so I stopped two thirds in. I might come back to it eventually. Some of Bellamy's concepts interested me, but the content was presented in such a dull fashion.

~Cheers