There have been radical changes in government, in industry, in the arts and sciences. Julian finds himself at sea in almost every field. Money is no longer in use, so all his efforts to perpetuate his fortune were meaningless. Cities no longer exist, nor wars, nor pollution. nor the threat of the exhaustion of the planet’s resources—none of the problems of his own time. There is no crime, no juvenile delinquents or the use of drugs.

He cannot believe so many changes could take place in but a third of a century. Leete asks him to consider, in comparison, the changes that took place between June 1914… June 1947. the same length of time.

The book ends with Julian disillusioned with this world as a Utopia—at least for him. Interlingua, an international language, has been established and the new generations do not even speak English. The Leetes had been especially trained to take care of him, as an interesting experiment. But the generation gap is such now, with human knowledge over 250 times greater than in his youth, that Julian cannot even communicate with the average person. When he proposes to Edith, she points out the impossibility. And he is too far behind, at the age of thirty-five, to ever catch up. By the time he got through the equivalent of grammar school, human knowledge would have doubled again.

He says, in despair, “I’ve been calling this Utopia, but it isn’t. For me, it’s dystopia, the exact opposite. I’m a freak. Why did you ever awaken me?”

Edith shook her head sadly. “It wasn’t my decision to make, Julian. I was against it.”

“We are free today substantially; but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will become concentrated in the hands of a few. A Republic cannot exist upon bayonets; and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation is in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements of the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.”