Século XX

Utopia Negra

Horace W. Newte  

The Master Beast
(1907)

E. M. Foster

The Machine Stops
(1912)

Ievgueni Ivanovitch Zamiatine  

Nous Autres
1920

« Je descendis et assistai à un délire général. Les soleils de cristal taillé éclairaient un quai bourré de têtes devant un train vide et engourdi. Je ne la voyais pas, mais je la reconnus à sa voix souple et flexible comme une cravache. Ses sourcils relevés vers les tempes devaient être quelque part…
- Laissez-moi passer. Il me faut…
Des pinces me saisirent aux bras et aux épaules, je fus immobilisé.
- Non, remontez. On vous guérira, on vous remplira de bonheur jusqu’aux bords.
Quand vous serez rassasié vous rêvasserez tranquillement, en mesure, et vous ronflerez. Vous n’entendez pas ce grand ronflement symphonique ? Vous êtes difficile: on veut vous débarrasser de ces points d’interrogation qui se tordent en vous comme des vers et vous torturent! Courez subir la Grande Opération!
- Qu’est-ce que cela peut vous faire si je ne consens pas à ce que d’autres veulent à ma place, si je veux vouloir moi-même, si je veux l’impossible…
Une voix lourde et lente lui répondit:
- Ah, ah ! L’impossible ! C’est à dire rêver à des chimères idiotes pour qu’elles s’agitent devant votre nez comme un appât. Non, nous coupons cet appât et…
- Et vous le mangez, et vous en aurez besoin d’un autre. Il paraît que les anciens avaient un animal appelé "âne". Pour le faire avancer, on lui attachait une carotte devant le nez de façon qu’il ne pût l’attraper. S’il l’attrapait, il la mangeait ».

Thea von Harbou  

Metropolis
(1926)

Metropolis
(1927)

Hugh Ferriss

The Metropolis of Tomorrow
(1929)

“Going down into the streets of a modern city must seem - to the newcomer, at least - a little like Dante's descent into Hades. Certainly so unacclimated a visitor would find, in the dense atmosphere, in the kaleidoscopic sights, the confused noise and the complex physical contacts, something very reminiscent of the lower realms.”

John Haldane

The Last Judgment
(1927)

James Hilton

Lost Horizon
(1933)

Aldous Huxley  

Brave New World
(1932)

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.
Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently–though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society”

Sinclair Lewis  

It can’t happen here
(1935)

George Orwell  

Animal Farm: A Fairy Tale
(1945)

“Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
'But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep - and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word - Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever”.

George Orwell

1984
(1949)

“With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later he was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of crimes - espionage, sabotage, and the like - to which everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force hirnself into losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes. There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself : " I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want."

Jack Williamson  

The Humanoids
(1948)

George Stewart  

Earth Abides
(1949)

Ray Bradbury  

The Martian Chronicles
(1950)

Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451
(1953)

Robert Merle  

Malevil
(1972)

Georges Perec  

W ou le Souvenir d’Enfance
(1975)

«Celui qui commence à se familiariser avec la vie W, un novice par exemple qui, venant des Maisons de Jeunes, arrive vers quatorze ans dans un des quatre villages, comprendra assez vite que l’une des caractéristiques, et peut-être la principale, du monde qui est désormais le sien est que la rigueur des institutions n’y a d’égale que l’ampleur des transgressions dont elles sont l’objet. Cette découverte, qui constituera pour le néophyte un des éléments déterminants de sa sauvegarde personnelle, se vérifiera constamment, à tous les niveaux, à tous les instants. La Loi est implacable, mais la Loi est imprévisible. Nul n’est censé l’ignorer, mais nul ne peut la connaître. Entre ceux qui la subissent et ceux qui l’édictent se dresse une barrière infranchissable. L’Athlète doit savoir que rien n’est sûr ; il doit s’attendre à tout, au meilleur et au pire ; les décisions qui le concernent, qu’elles soient futiles ou vitales, sont prises en dehors de lui ; il n’a aucun contrôle sur elles. Il peut croire que, sportif, sa fonction est de gagner, car c’est la Victoire que l’on fête et c’est la défaite que l’on punit ; mais il peut arriver dernier et être proclamé Vainqueur : ce jour-là, à l’occasion de cette course-là, quelqu’un, quelque part, aura décidé que l’on courrait à qui perd gagne. ».

Pamela Sargent

Cloned Lives

Kim Stanley Robinson

Pacific Edge
(1990)

Lebbeus Woods  

The New City
(1992 )

Kim Stanley Robinson

Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson

Green Mars
(1994)

Russell Hoban  

Fremder
(1996)

Howard V. Hendrix

Lightpaths
(1997)