Utopia, Anti-Utopia and Science Fiction

Abstract

The relationship between Utopian literature and science fiction is a complex and in some respects problematic one. While the two genres have come to overlap to the extent that some argue they have effectively merged, their origins are nevertheless quite distinct. For the teacher of Utopian literature (the fictional representation of a more perfect society, as distinct from Utopian political theory, which has an even longer history) the obvious starting point is Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), whereas in the case of science fiction, although its origins are more open to debate, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is the most commonly assumed foundational text.1 By most reckonings, then, Utopian literature pre-dates the emergence of what comes to be known as science fiction by over three hundred years. And while some Utopias of the intervening period, such as Tomasso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1623) and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1627), may envisage scientific innovation as an important aspect of their imagined societies, it would be hard to describe the result as science fiction, inasmuch as nothing that actually happens in either narrative is in any way affected by the fact.