Some time at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the changed worldviews are also reflected in the utopian books: the development of science and ideas in general contributed to increased hope that the world may be changed for the better. This idea brings about the era of utopias taking place not in another geographical location, but in our own world, in the future – this type of utopias are sometimes also referred to as euchronias – in which such progress has been made that all people live happily. Among the first utopias of this kind is The Year 2440 (1771) by Louis-Sébastian Mercier. The pattern established by Mercier, and followed by many later utopias, is: the narrator who is contemporary of the author arrives somehow (through sleep, in a time machine or through some mysterious gate) to the future, where, similarly to the utopias of the previous centuries, he/she is welcomed by the citizens prepared to explain to him/her their social order. The utopian elements in Mercier’s book are seen in the fact that in Paris of the future there is no poverty, people are neither vain nor greedy, they all care for the general good and not for their own interests, while the cities are clean, with wide streets, while everyone wears similar cloths and no one stands out either in their clothing or in their wealth. Edward Bellamy and William Morris use similar patterns. In Looking Backwards (1888) by Bellamy, the narrator from 1887 wakes up in the year 2000, where his host explains how America has transformed. In Bellamy’s utopia there is no more poverty, everyone is employed and all receive an equal part of the profit. Morris, on the other hand, in his utopian vision News from Nowhere (1890), written as a reaction to Looking Backwards, in which the narrator wakes up several hundred years into the future, describes a world in which civilization is abandoned in favor of bringing humanity closer to nature: people there are always kind and jovial – there is no poverty, although there is no progress or industrialization either, and everyone works not out of obligation, but out of pleasure.
With many of his novels, H. G. Wells is a figure that marks the transition from this kind of perfect societies achieved in the future and the frightening societies, also known as dystopias, dark visions of the future, in which a totalitarian regime has been established in which terror and pessimism dominate. Although there is a large number of dystopian works, the most frequently analyzed in literary criticism and most often mentioned in connection to the rise of fascism and Stalinism are: We (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. Although these three novels are often mentioned in a common context, there are great differences between them: thus, for example, while Huxley expresses fear from the too much liberalism and the development of consumer society in the United States, Orwell fears the negative consequences of establishing totalitarian regimes and taking away people’s freedom of choice. The reasons for this radical transformation of the desire for a perfect society into a fear of the perfect society are numerous, and are mainly due to the historical and political changes in the first half of the twentieth century, above all the two world wars, which has led to a complete change in the structure of utopias, provided that we take the term “utopia” as a general term covering all types of utopias – including utopias, dystopias and other utopian subgenres that appear later. Namely, instead of the typical contemporary and fellow citizen of the author who travels into another location or in another time, the dystopias portrait protagonists who are citizens of the dystopian society itself. Most commonly, the protagonist does not know anything or know very little of what the world looked like before the society in which he/she lives was established.
The first hint of the possible dying out of the utopian ideas takes place in the second half of the twentieth century, when utopias are no longer so focused on building a perfect society in the future, nor are political elements as dominant as in the previous centuries; instead, they begin to get combined with other genres, especially science fiction. In this context, some relevant would be: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time or Joanna Russ’s The Female Man. Le Guin’s novel, for example, takes place on the twin planets of Urras and Anarres – the disciples of Odo were allowed to immigrate on Annares where they built something that resembles a perfect society. Although the science fiction element dominates in the novel, on a more symbolical level, one can notice close analogies with the political situation in the world in which Le Guin lives, and which is harshly criticized by the author, at the same time expressing doubt in the possibility of establishing a blueprint perfect society.
More intensive doubts in the survival of utopia are expressed in the time of the fall of communism, when, as Fukuyama says, it is considered that liberal democracy is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution. Thus, in the last three decades, the utopian genre has transformed so much that, according to some critics, it is beyond recognition, or has lost its connection to almost all utopian elements. Today, within the critical discussions on utopian works, there are many dilemmas regarding whether post-apocalyptic visions which do not deal with creating a perfect society (such as The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy (the book has also been turned into a film) or the films The Day after Tomorrow (2004, directed by Roland Emmerich), I am Legend (2007, directed by Francis Lawrence) and a number of other on a similar topic) or the books and films in which the events take place in the future but only a few aspects of the world are changes, while the residents are the same as today’s residents (that is, they have not vanquished their vanity, avarice, selfishness, as the citizens of More’s or Mercier’s utopias have done – for example Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report (film: 2002, directed by Steven Spielberg) or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (film: 2010, directed by Mark Romanek) – would belong at all in the utopian genre.
In other words, the question is how many and which utopian elements should a work have in order to belong to the category of utopias? It the category is too flexible and can include any work with an expressed idea for working towards a better world, even if events take place in the present, or can include any science fiction work regardless of whether it discusses any strives for creating a perfect society – then the category would lose its sense. If it is too rigid, it would only include More’s Utopia and a few other works which very closely resemble it. It is especially underlined that in recent books and films there is no such dedication to the idea of creating a blueprint perfect society, as was the case with Utopia. Despite assumptions that utopia has reached a dead-end, Novica Petrović (2014) emphasizes that the recent study by Fredric Jameson entitled Archaeologies of the Future shows that there are “voices on the political left still committed to countering the claims that Utopian dreams are politically obsolete” (p. 655). The numerous research in the last few years (D. Milošević, M. Ćuk, A. Johns, N. Petrović, A. Dodeman, M. Živković) of the utopian novels of contemporary authors such as Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin or of thinkers such as Fredric Jameson, point to the fact that the opposite is true.
Kenneth Roemer (2010) gives his working definition of what a literary utopia is: “a fairly detailed narrative description of an imaginary culture – a fiction that invites readers to experience vicariously an alternative reality that critiques their by opening intellectual and emotional spaces that encourage readers to perceive the realities and potentials of their cultures in new ways” (Roemer, 2010: 79).
The life on our planet is far from perfect – which amply provides for a long future of utopian thinking. If we consider Roemer’s definition, the utopias which are not given as a blueprint for structuring a perfect society, but are narrative descriptions of an imaginary culture open to persistent inclusion of new changes (the novels of Le Guin, Piercy or Russ, often analyzed from a feminist point of view as well); the post-apocalyptic books or films, which criticize our reality through warning about a possible catastrophic future unless we change the present devastation of our planet and which sometimes have elements of ecology (The Road or The Day after Tomorrow); the books and films that open discussions about potential cloning or systems of punishing criminals before they commit crime (Never Let Me Go or Minority Report) – although they do not offer a model of a perfect and happy future, they still belong to the utopian literature: they invite the reader to experience an alternative reality, as Roemer says, by “opening intellectual and emotional spaces that encourage readers to perceive the realities and potentials of their cultures in new ways”, that is, they draw the attention of readers and audiences to think about creating a better future.
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