Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887

Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, first published in 1888. It uses temporal displacement to stage a comparison of economic orders.

Julian West, a wealthy Bostonian troubled by labour unrest, sleeps in a protected underground chamber after being mesmerized. He wakes in the year 2000 in the home of Dr Leete, finding his private world made historical.

Through conversations and tours, Leete explains a society where production has been nationally organized, citizens serve in an industrial army, and income is distributed through equal credit. Bellamy contrasts this system with competitive economic inequality.

Julian's growing attachment to Edith Leete connects social conversion to his lost life and former fiancée. The novel's explanatory structure privileges argument over adventure, asking readers to see the present through an imagined future.

"I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. "What!" you say, "eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen fifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It was about four in the afternoon of December the 26th, one day after Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I first breathed the east wind of Boston."