Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Idea, Lousy Execution
Review: Other reviews have described the plot, so I won't spend much time on it. A man, Julian West, goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds a socialist utopia.At first, the book is quite interesting. Bellamy does a good job of capturing the protagonist's surpise and confusion at the new world he discovers. The fact that Edith Leete looks like his fiance back in 1887 Boston is a neat twist. The socialist state the author describes is appealing to me, and as someone who believes that socialism can work, I found it thought provoking. The problem is, there is not enough story or character development here. Bellamy's ideas aren't really suited to the fictional form. He'd have been better off to write a solely political tract. Because the author can't seem to decide if he wants to write a novel or a political essay, both the narrative and the politics are oversimplified, and given short shrift. The introduction by Cecilia Titchi (pardon my spelling), was excellent. In fact, the book fails to live up to it. If you know nothing about socialism, this book my enlighten you as to the philosophy. If it is an option for a political science class, it would be a good pick because it is easy and quick reading. Otherwise, I wouldn't rush to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: A good catalyst for discussion, but a dry, flat style
Review: Our high school read this book for our Summer Reading Program. Most students and faculty agreed that the book raised excellent questions for discussion, but the dry, flat style of the writing made it very difficult to read. After falling asleep several times trying to read this at night, I finally forced myself to read it early in the morning. Bellamy spends much of the novel explaining how this socialist utopia functions, providing detailed analysis of the economy, government, education, and other institutions. I would recommend this book to readers interested in discussing political issues, but not for readers who need a strong plot or dynamic characters.
Rating:
Summary: A good try...
Review: The main reason why I bought this book, was the optimistic tone on the cover. It's quite hard to discover books like that and when I come across one, it's mine in a second. As far as this is concerned, 'Looking backward' certainly met my expectations. It has faith in human nature and is quite optimistic about the future. The author has put great efford into figuring out a society that could maybe work if we put our minds to it. I cannot help but compare it to Huxleys 'Island'. A significant thought in that book was that people can't be happy before some basic living conditions are fulfilled. While Huxley focuses mainly on the total pursue of happiness after these basic problems are dealt with, Bellamy tries to work out a way to bring bread on the table for everybody. To me, this is the most valuable feature of 'Looking backward'. The system he describes however, seems to me somehow unatainable, unless human nature changes greatly over the years. Bellamy made the common mistake : He forgot about people. The people he describes in 2000 are aliens to me. Surely people cannot live in a ready-made society, where everything is taken care of for them. They need their goals in life and the freedom to choose their own path towards these goals. Where can teenagers who just want to travel around a bit after finishing school go to in Bellamy's utopia ? According to his presentation, they go into jail. Needless to say I can't agree with this at all. Moreover, people could never be as unselfish and pure as Bellamy describes them. In theory, this is a beautiful system, put real human beings into it and it falls apart. Why is it that most 'dreamers' can't accept the ways of human nature ? It's perfectly allright for people to be a bit selfish, confused, slobby, and so on... . Why not create an utopia that is really adjusted to US, instead of to something we will/can never be ? This I found very disappointing. Nevertheless I give this book a quote of 3 stars for making a really good try for a description of Utopia and offering people the insight that our main goal should not be saving ourselves, but saving everybody. This insight could be the start of something wonderfull... .
Rating:
Summary: too dogmatic
Review: The problem I have with this book is the problem I have with most "theory through fiction" books, specifically that it isn't very well written and just comes across as dogmatic. Despite my personal attraction to a more leftist philosophy, I still enjoy well written fiction. I'd just like to point out a mistake in another review, in the book people are allowed to choose their own jobs within the limits of their abilities. They aren't forced into certain professions.
Rating: 
Summary: Looking Backward, Writing Badly
Review: The problem with this book isn't the silliness of its socialist utopian vision, in which economic and social equality are brought forth by a wave of the author's bizarre magic wand over the masses of humanity. Goofy utopian societies have been invented by writers using the trite mechanism of "if everybody would just agree with my ideas and get along, all our problems would mysteriously vanish" going back at least to Plato, and they pretty nearly always spawn little cults or big movements of starry-eyed followers who just can't understand why everybody doesn't agree with the writer and thereby make the world a warm fuzzy place, tra la la. The movement propelled by Bellamy's folderol was certainly no little cult, and its silliness plagues us still, but that, too, is not really the problem with the book, per se. Nor is the lack of scientific or technological foresight the greatest shortcoming of this book. After all, it's no crime for an author to be subliterate regarding the physical sciences and engineering, particularly when that author was writing at a time before the pace of technological change had accelerated to twentieth century levels. Bellamy gets near the mark in a few cases, and the reader really shouldn't expect much more than that. No, what makes this a truly dreary, tiresome, wearing book is rather the one single crime for which no writer can be forgiven: he does not write well. Bellamy was a lousy writer, plain and simple, and regardless of one's social or political or economic church, a fair and impartial judgement of any novel should be based first on the quality of its writing. Edward Bellamy had no ear for language or dialog, no feel for wit or humor, no talent for description of a scene, no aptitude for characterization, and no capacity for engaging the reader and drawing him into the printed page. He was just not a good writer, and consequently the book is laborious and wearisome to read. Some twenty years after "Looking Backward", H.G. Wells wrote "The Sleeper Wakes", about a fellow who, like Julian West, takes a Rip Van Winkle-ish nap and wakes up to a future society vastly different from the Victorian one he knew. Wells' vision of the future is rather different from Bellamy's, and some of his notions might have been just as goofy, but at least he could write. A dyed-in-the-wool socialist looking for tedious paralogia to support his pet notions might find some value in "Looking Backward", but a reader looking for a well-written Victorian look forward would be better off with Wells.
Rating:
Summary: This must have been a satire.
Review: The utopia envisioned by Bellamy is so outrageous that I cannot help but to think that this was a satire. Even without the knowledge that socialist utopias would fail miserably wherever tried, surely no one could possibly believe what Bellamy, who does seem intelligent, pretends to believe. Did he really think that mere love of country, and of fellow man, would inspire everyone to be economically productive? Surely, anyone who believes this has no understanding of human nature. Did he really believe that we would want to live in a society in which a man couldn't sell a five-dollar item to his neighbor without going to the federal government for approval? Did he really believe in a world without war? If this book was meant to be a satire, give Bellamy credit. If not, then he must have been such an idealist as to be completely blind to reality--the reality of human nature.
Rating: 
Summary: Still pretty interesting
Review: This "novel" is an excellent description of socialism at its best (written, incidentally, decades before Stalin or the USSR). The story is pretty irrelevant, consisting of your basic heterosexual narrative thrown in simply for the purposes of getting published, I imagine. The ideas about what socialism would look like are presented almost entirely as dialogue in the form of explanations to a knowledge-hungry gentleman who has been in a hypnosis-induced comma for a hundred years, and awakes to find himself in a futuristic utopia. It's interesting to note that Bellamy wrote a sequel to this book (long out-of-print) that addresses the problems with his socialist vision. There is dissent in this new world, and Bellamy describes an alternative anarchist society rising on the fringes to address the lack of freedom in his socialist model.
Rating:
Summary: A persistent favorite and an interesting view of Utopia
Review: This book is a persistent favorite, and I admit to enjoying it tremendously as a school student. However, "Looking Backward" would not be read today if it weren't for Bellamy's extraordinary vision of a socialist utopia that was in stark contrast to the realities created by 20th Century Communism. Bellamy himself wanted to distance himself from "Das Kapital", published 40 years before "Looking Backward." The godless society was not his vision; instead he created a perfect society of people who were naturally good, and, with the proper upbringing and values instilled, would report for their assignment in the work corp, deal unselfishly with their neighbors and work hard and selflessly for the common good. Obviously, Bellamy was not a student of human psychology, nor a keen observer of children, who exhibit cruelty and selfish nature pretty much as soon as they can walk. The story is badly written as a novel--Bellamy relies on stilted conversation for exposition of his ideas and the idea of a mesmerized insomniac sleeping peacefully and unagingly for years locked away in an insulated capsule while his house burned down around him is silly even by science fiction standards. Nevertheless, the vision of symphony concerts piped in by advanced technology (radio broadcasts and sterophonic sound), the distribution of goods by automated means is extraordinarily prescient, even if these enterprises today are for profit and not free for the taking as in "Looking Backward." Despite the fantasy, the total lack of understanding of human nature and the clumsy writing, this book is still an enjoyable version of Utopia and especially fun for younger readers.
Rating:
Summary: A persistent favorite and an interesting view of Utopia
Review: This book is a persistent favorite, and I admit to enjoying it tremendously as a school student. However, "Looking Backward" would not be read today if it weren't for Bellamy's extraordinary vision of a socialist utopia that was in stark contrast to the realities created by 20th Century Communism. Bellamy himself wanted to distance himself from "Das Kapital", published 40 years before "Looking Backward." The godless society was not his vision; instead he created a perfect society of people who were naturally good, and, with the proper upbringing and values instilled, would report for their assignment in the work corp, deal unselfishly with their neighbors and work hard and selflessly for the common good. Obviously, Bellamy was not a student of human psychology, nor a keen observer of children, who exhibit cruelty and selfish nature pretty much as soon as they can walk. The story is badly written as a novel--Bellamy relies on stilted conversation for exposition of his ideas and the idea of a mesmerized insomniac sleeping peacefully and unagingly for years locked away in an insulated capsule while his house burned down around him is silly even by science fiction standards. Nevertheless, the vision of symphony concerts piped in by advanced technology (radio broadcasts and sterophonic sound), the distribution of goods by automated means is extraordinarily prescient, even if these enterprises today are for profit and not free for the taking as in "Looking Backward." Despite the fantasy, the total lack of understanding of human nature and the clumsy writing, this book is still an enjoyable version of Utopia and especially fun for younger readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Social commentary as poignant today as it was in the 19th c.
Review: Those who berate the author for the few erroneous notions he had about the progress of technology, or for his vision of utopian Boston in Y2K that somehow resembles the failed experiment of the Soviet Union, miss the point. Looking Backward is about neither of these topics. Rather, it is a social commentary about the 19th century - its crime, corruption, poverty, and general lack of human compassion. The challenge for the reader of the 21st century is to compare Bellamy's world with our own and see how little has really changed. Toward the end of the story we are given a list of headlines from a newspaper dated 1887. Could they not be the same headlines from today's daily? It is these ills that are addressed in Looking Backward, and, for me at least, Bellamy succeeds.
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