Better known these days for his artistic contributions to the Arts & Crafts movement, William Morris was also a prolific author and prominent socialist thinker. News From Nowhere is a glimpse at a utopian future – or rather it is a novel-length thesis on how things should be, presented in novel format, with the convenient exposition and lengthy explanations that naturally go with this micro-genre. Surprisingly, though, it’s pretty readable, and Morris’s utopian ideas are very well-developed and feasible – so a success overall, not at all as a prediction, but as a vision for people to aim for.
I expect Morris would have been horrified by the first half of the 20th century. But wouldn’t everybody?
News From Nowhere
News From Nowhere (full text at Project Gutenberg)
News From Nowhere (audio at Librivox)