A Modern Utopia - Origins

Origins

The work was partly inspired by a trip to the Alps Wells made with his friend Graham Wallis, a prominent member of the Fabian Society.

A Modern Utopia was intended as a hybrid between fiction and 'philosophical discussion'.

Wells began by stating that the people of this utopia have to plan "a flexible common compromise, in which a perpetually novel succession of individualities may converge most effectually upon a comprehensive onward development." That is the first, most generalised difference between a Utopia based upon modern conceptions and all the other Utopian stories that were written previously (Wells, Ch. 1).

An important fact about this modern Utopia is that the people's purpose is to be Utopian. Also, the modern Utopia must have people inherently the same as those in the rest of the world.

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