To Arthur C. Clarke

With whom I couldn’t agree more when he wrote in his excellent PROFILES OF THE FUTURE: It is impossible to predict the future, and all attempts to do so in any detail appear ludicrous within a very few years… If this book seems completely reasonable and all my extrapolations convincing, I will not have succeeded in looking very far ahead; for the one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic.

Almost a century ago, an obscure, unsuccessful writer named Edward Bellamy wrote a novel. Looking Backward, the success of which was as much a surprise to him as it was to the rest of the world. Indeed, it shortly became the most influential Utopian book ever written. Sales were in the millions; it was translated into twenty languages: countless editions were issued and it has never gone out of print. It deeply influenced such men as John Dewey. William Allen White, Norman Thomas, Thorstein Veblen. Franklin D. Roosevelt reported that in his youth, it was his “Bible.” Not too long ago, when a committee of three literary personalities—John Dewey, Charles Beard, and Edward Weeks—was named to designate the twenty-five most influential books published since 1885, Bellamy’s novel was voted unanimously as second only to Marx’ Das Kapital.

But a century is a longtime, and although Looking Backward is still highly readable, even inspiring to those who envision a better world, it is very dated. Much of what Bellamy foresaw in portraying his future society has already been accomplished: much can never be.

So it was that I had decided to use the fundamental plot, the basic characters, and aim for the same goal as did Bellamy—a portrayal of the world in 2000 A.D. as it might be if man comes to his senses. The novel, dedicated to Edward Bellamy, was entitled Looking Backward: From the Year 2000.