Friday, October 21, 2022

Utopias, Dystopias, and Today, Part 2


As I noted in my previous post, I read an article in StAR by Manuel Alfonseco about utopias and dystopias. I had read/reread some of the books he mentioned in preparation for the dystopian 2020 election and what followed.

But as I mentioned books I had read, I wondered how many utopian and dystopian works I had actually read over the years - with the understanding that I'm more dystopian in nature.

Some of the utopian works I've read:

The Republic by Plato
Utopia (1516) by St. Thomas More.
Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759) by Voltaire
Lost Horizon (1933) by James Hilton
Childhood's End (1954) by Arthur C. Clarke

The much more extensive list of dystopian works I've read:

The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells
Lord of the World (1908) by Robert Hugh Benson
R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots (1921) by Karel Čapek
We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis
Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) by George Orwell
Player Piano (1952) by Kurt Vonnegut
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) by Walter M. Miller Jr.
"Harrison Bergeron" (1961) by Kurt Vonnegut
The Man in the High Castle (1962) by Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick
Stand on Zanzibar (1968) by John Brunner
The Lorax (1971) by Dr. Seuss
The Stand (1978) by Stephen King
The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
The Hunger Games (2008) by Suzanne Collins

There are so many other works to read - but I'm busy with the pile of books I already have waiting for me.

Pax et bonum

No comments: