Utopian Horizons comprises chapters discussing diverse aspects of utopia ranging from its definitions and relations to ideology and different possible uses to practical studies of selected political, ideological, and cultural phenomena. The editor's introduction, apart from providing a useful overview of the reception of utopia, considers the problem of the ways in which fiction, an indispensable element of literary utopias, affects their possible ideological impact. This is a highly relevant issue all too often ignored in utopian studies, despite repeated claims to the contrary.The first part of the book (“Utopia with a Political Focus”) introduces five essays discussing some of the fundamental oppositions functioning in utopian studies. Lyman Tower Sargent in “Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur” considers the distinction between utopia and ideology as understood by the two thinkers. Contrary to common critical opinion downplaying the role of utopia in their thought, Sargent convincingly argues that its status is at least equal to, if not more important than, that of ideology. Moreover, although both Mannheim and Ricoeur claim that “their analyses have nothing to do with utopian literature” (34), so that their definitions of utopia and ideology should not be automatically applied to literary utopias, the impact of ideology on most utopian literature seems undeniable.An even more complex and somewhat paradoxical opposition between utopia and dystopia is insightfully considered by Gregory Claeys (“When Does Utopianism Produce Dystopia?”). In attempting to demonstrate the ways in which utopianism may lead to its exact opposite, Claeys points to the role played by secular religion derived from the radical model of millenarianism as adopted by totalitarian states such as the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. He argues that “utopia is not synonymous with perfectionism, but represents a guided improvement of human behavior. Perfectionism is a religious category. Utopia is not” (44). Also, the key element of a totalitarian society is neither communism nor striving for perfection but the use of violence to attain its desired goals. This is a very important essay that questions many of the standard, though largely groundless, associations with the concepts of utopia and dystopia and their uses not only in political discourse but also in scholarly reflection.Discussing the differences between political and philosophical utopias (“From the Political Utopia to the Philosophical Utopia”), Fátima Vieira convincingly demonstrates that the predominant function of utopian discourse is not to provide ready-made solutions but to offer a locus for introducing and testing new ideas, exploring different possible options for the future, rather than offering a prescription for a perfect society. Utopian thinking resembles the dialectical method in offering us different points of view about the proper constitution of society as a way of establishing the truth. This is a very significant revision of the commonly accepted view of the function of utopias that, hopefully, should bring about a radical change in the way utopia is perceived outside utopian studies.In “Third Way Utopianism: Anarcho-democratic and Liberal Socialist Ideas in Central Europe” András Bozóki and Miklós Sükösd offer a new perspective on the persistent attempts by many Central European thinkers to come up with the “third way” solution combining the best elements of incompatible ideologies of anarchism, democracy, and liberal socialism and eliminating their negative ones, an approach that the authors characterize as hybrid utopianism. Despite repeated failures of such attempts in the past, they may possess—precisely because of their hybrid character—major potential in solving the problems facing the contemporary world resulting from its contradictions and resistance to homogenization.Dmitry Halavach presents a highly instructive contrastive comparison of Orwell's view of the individual in a totalitarian system and the actual perception of the Soviet system by those living within its domain as exemplified by their diaries (“George Orwell, Soviet Studies, and the ‘Soviet Subjectivity’ Debate”). He compares the role of dystopian novels such as Nineteen-Eighty Four in shaping the Western perception of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state with its self-description as a new kind of subjectivity erasing the boundaries between the individual and the public that seems to predominate in post-1989 attitudes toward the USSR adopted by many Western scholars.Part II of the book (“Utopia with a Literary Focus”) focuses on different aspects of utopia and ideology as reflected in a variety of literary texts. Eglantina Remport looks at the complex relationships between Marxism and modern Irish drama through the framework of utopianism (“Marxist Utopianism and Modern Irish Drama, 1884–1904: William Morris, W. B. Yeats, and G. B. Shaw”). Apart from its literary historical value, her discussion identifies important characteristics of the interactions between ideology and literature.The actual functioning of religion in utopias is examined by Károly Pintér on the basis of H. G. Wells's fictional and nonfictional writings (“Civil Religion as Utopian Ideology: A Case Study of H. G. Wells”). Having given a succinct account of the rise and development of the concept of “civil religion” and the complicated relationship between religion and utopia, Pintér analyzes Wells's evolving use of civil religion as shaped by the dual influence of “the nineteenth-century optimistic spirit believing in scientific progress and the unbridled potential of the future development of humankind on the one hand, and the anxious, fretful atmosphere of the post-1918 period on the other, in which the future was suddenly transformed into a vague, looming threat of dangerous possibilities” (151–52). Particularly interesting and original is a detailed comparative analysis of Rousseau's and Wells's conceptions of civil religions and their main characteristics and social functions.In “Negative Utopia in Central Europe: Kazohinia and the Dystopian Political Climate of the 1930s” Zsolt Czigányik presents a fascinating account of a Hungarian dystopian novel, first published in 1941, revealing its complexities and sociopolitical entanglements, both local and European. Of particular value is an extensive comparative study of Kazohinia and Book IV of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, of which Szathmári's novel purports to be a sequel. The literary analysis is supplemented by an account of Kazohinia's position with regard to such disparate contemporary political ideologies as nationalism, fascism, and anarchism.Equally interesting is Ákos Farkas's meticulous examination of how the Hungarian translator transformed Aldous Huxley's utopian pamphlet advocating world peace into a revisionist call for (armed) resistance to the dictates of the superpowers imposing heavy territorial losses on post–World War I Hungary (“What They Were Going to Do About It: Huxley's Peace Pamphlet in Pre-war Hungary”), turning a pacifist utopia into a militaristic-nationalistic one.The last two essays discuss some examples of twenty-first-century dystopian cinema and literature/TV series. Vera Benczik examines dystopian and utopian aspects of American cinema in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (“The City in Ruins: Post-9/11 Representations of Cataclysmic New York on Film”). She situates the new cinematic vision of cataclysm in the traditional mode of representation of apocalyptic cities, formulating its spatial poetics with the key role played by iconic landmark structures and identifying its functions, ranging from horror to a perverse form of entertainment and expression of certain collective traumas. She also stresses the role of 9/11 iconography in defining a new visual poetics of representing disaster and its techniques based on resorting to the conventions of news broadcasts and special reports.Zoltán Gábor Szűcs uses A Song of Ice and Fire, made famous by the television series A Game of Thrones, as his point of departure for a provocative analysis of the intricacies of political realism vis-à-vis utopianism as exemplified by Tolkien's vision of the world based on ultimate justice (“Realism and Utopianism Reconsidered: A Political Theoretical Reading of A Song of Ice and Fire”). He persuasively argues that the distance between fictional depictions of political stability and the political realist tradition is not so great, to the extent that the fantasy novel series and political realism represent two sides of the same coin, as both assume the existence of clear-cut boundaries.In the concluding afterword Zsolt Czigányik succinctly identifies the key leitmotifs underlying the thematically diverse contributions and suggests that jointly they go some way toward bridging the gap between the literary, practical, and theoretical aspects of utopianism. At this point it could be observed that such an attempt at interdisciplinary studies of utopias and utopianism should always take into account the methodological postulate formulated by Russian Formalist Boris Eikhenbaum: “Literature, like any other specific order of things, is not generated from facts belonging to other orders and therefore cannot be reduced to such facts. The relations between the facts of the literary order and facts extrinsic to it cannot simply be causal relations but can only be the relations of correspondence, interaction, dependency, or conditionality.”1Utopian Horizons constitutes an interesting and valuable contribution to utopian studies, the more so as some contributors focus on various manifestations of utopianism in the Hungarian context, virtually unknown to most Western scholars. The book as a whole is highly informative, insightful, and accessible, avoiding the excesses of theoretical and quasi-theoretical jargon, which radically expands its potential readership.