Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy. A man from 1887 wakes in the year 2000 and discovers a transformed society based on cooperation and equality. It is worth listening for its vivid contrast between industrial-era struggles and an imagined future.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
LOOKING BACKWARD From 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy AUTHOR'S PREFACE Historical Section Shawmut College, Boston, December 26, 2000 Living as we do in the closing year of the twentieth century, enjoying the blessings of a social order at once so simple and logical that it seems but the triumph of common sense, it is no doubt difficult for those whose studies have not been largely historical to realize that the present organization of society is, in its completeness, less than a century old. No historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval!
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