From the 1870s, and for a quarter century, every new Verne novel had been issued in translation. Abruptly, in 1898, American and British publishers broke this tradition with The Mighty Orinoco (Le Superbe Orénoque), now available for the first time in English over a century later from Wesleyan University Press.
Why did the publishers of Verne's time reject this book, and nearly every one thereafter, although one or two Verne books had appeared annually under his byline in France until 1910, five years after his death? Since 1880, Verne stories had been mainstays of Boys Own Paper in England. American publishers came to rely more and more on utilizing the English translations, rather than commissioning fresh ones for use in the United States. Hence, by the 1890s, the anticipated taste of the British market came to govern what appeared in English translations on either side of the Atlantic.
The lack of a translation of The Mighty Orinoco has also been a factor in the conventional perception of Verne as a writer unable to place women in strong roles. The hero of The Mighty Orinoco is a 22-year-old woman undertakes a search for the father she has never known, whom she learns may have disappeared along the South American river that forms the book's title. To travel incognito, she dresses as a 17 year old boy, Jean, accompanied by one of her father's former military aides, Martial (whose name signifies his background). This is not simply the conventional story for youth of a girl proving courageous when faced with sudden danger. Instead it is a premeditated adoption of a new gender, a complete violation of the standard sex roles.
Along the way, she and Martial meet two naturalists, also exploring the river, and join forces. One of them, Jacques, cannot account for the attraction he feels toward Jean, deeper than what can be accounted for by male friendship. For his part, Martial is frustrated at his inability to shield Jeanne from this potential future lover. Only when rescuing Jean from drowning does Jacques discover her secret, and at that point their emotions can follow a normal heterosexual development.
Jean/Jeanne herself ultimately makes a similar transformation; for the search of her father, she had passed as a man, but once it is no longer necessary, she assumes feminine garb, which she had even brought with her. As noted in the critical commentary by the dean of American Verne scholars, Walter James Miller, Jacques remains attracted to the masculine side of Jeanne's nature, revealing Verne's insight into the dual aspects of masculinity and femininity present in individuals of either gender. As Germain exclaims of Jeanne, "Charming as a lad, and charming as a lass! It's true-I don't understand it at all!" (354) And on the return journey, calling again on those who knew them on the way out, Jacques has to explain how he married Jean!
It is easy to see why such a premise, as readily comprehensible as it may be to older readers, would be precluded when Boys Own Paper was such a crucial outlet. And that fact, unfortunately, denied for English-language readers one of Verne's best late colonial adventures.
Verne's journey involves a perilous passage, through steadily greater natural dangers, climaxing in abduction by bandits. However, their destination reveals not the heart of darkness, but one of light and civilization. Jeanne's father has become a priest and head of a utopian community, named Juana for Jeanne. He combines the best aspects of both a man of faith and one who insures the defense of the city, and the forces of righteousness defeat the bandits.
Verne well knew that his readers would quickly guess Jeanne's "secret," so he added mystery as the story unfolds, by initial withholding some of the motivations for her trip. Only in a fragmentary way are aspects of her past filled in, with the end jumping ahead to switch point of view entirely with her father's discover of his daughter and his rescue of her (he had thought she had died as a child). As Miller notes, the development and interweaving of the five plot "strands is a lesson in plotting." (374) In this way the reversal and recognition on which the novel relies remains fresh and vivid. The book is well-paced, with a perfect balance of varied and intriguing characters.
In typical manner for the genre, Verne reveals conflicting attitudes toward race and imperialism. There is a consciousness of racial difference, among Indians, Spaniards, and those of mixed blood (again, hardly likely to be approved of as reading for the Boys Own audience), but there are also no racist assumptions based on this background. Similarly, Verne sees typical benefits of "civilization," that is, white civilization, in the usual manner offered through missionary work, health, improvements in agriculture, and the like. The hope for the country's future is an Indian boy who has been educated at the mission, but who lost his father to the bandits, evoking parallels with Jeanne. The only true villain is the Spanish bandit Jorres, who, in another echo of Jeanne, is revealed to actually be the outlaw Alfaniz. Humor is derived from a trio of quarrelsome European explorers, true idiot savants, who are perpetually unable to agree on the river's tributaries.
Fortunately, again Wesleyan University Press's ongoing series of the Early Classics of Science Fiction, which will include a number of previously untranslated Verne books, has included all the original engravings, reproduced in an even higher quality than their previous Verne volumes, The Invasion of the Sea and The Mysterious Island. Pioneering Verne scholar Stanford Luce, who wrote the first American doctoral dissertation on Verne, provides a highly readable translation.

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.

I grew up on science fiction, and many years ago read this book and was utterly unimpressed. Over the years, at SF conventions, I would ask other fans if they had read this book. Now these are fans who could regale you with quotes from Star Trek, or Star Wars, and who often had read most of Larry Niven or Andre Norton. But "Looking Backward"? Bellamy? Many had never heard of the book or the author. Those who had read the book often shared my opinion. By comparison, all I asked had read "Time Machine" by Wells, and had seen the movie.

I think it is instructive to compare the two books. Written within a few years of each other, with Bellamy's actually being the first, why did "Time Machine" live on, and the other being relegated to a well deserved obscurity? In fact, "Time Machine" is generally considered the first famous novel that describes the concept of time travel.

Try reading the two books consecutively. Well's story is gripping and dramatic. Bellamy's seems stilted and ponderous. Part of this is just the differences in literary style in the intervening century. But "Time Machine" is still a dashing read. Bellamy's text is a thinly wrapped polemic; a hosanna to his vision of a socialistic utopia. Most of the book is a hectoring lecture as to how late twentieth century Boston is a secular paradise, with the evils of capitalism just a historial curiosity. For one thing, books on utopia do not sell well. Regardless of your personal political beliefs, a book that is soothing and tranquil lacks a certain vivacity and drama.

This book is significant today, but NOT as science fiction. Rather as a guidepost to the socialistic beliefs of a certain subculture of a past century.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the movie!

Having never really heard of this novel or its author before, I was rather surprised to discover how immensely popular it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Edward Bellamy does an excellent albeit sometimes pedantic job of communicating his socioeconomic views and provides an interesting and informative read, despite the fact that the utopia of his fictional creation is a socialist nightmare in the realm of my own personal philosophy. It is very important to understand the time in which Bellamy was writing, especially for a conservative-minded thinker such as myself who holds many of Bellamy's views as anathema. It was the mid-1880s, a time of great social unrest; vast strikes by labor unions, clashes between workers and managers, a debilitating economic depression. Bellamy, to his credit, in no way comes off as holier than thou; his wealthy protagonist recognizes his own responsibility in seeing the world in the eyes of the more prosperous classes, basically ignoring the plights of the poor and downtrodden, having inherited rather than earned the money he is privileged to enjoy, etc. This makes the character's observations and conclusions very impactful upon the reader.

While I do respect Bellamy's views and understand the context in which they germinated, I cannot help but describe his future utopia as nothing less than naïve, socialistic, unworkable, and destructive of the individual spirit. Indeed, it sounds to me like vintage Soviet communism, at least in its ideals. Bellamy is a Marxist with blinders on. I should describe the actual novel at this point. The protagonist, an insomniac having employed a mesmerist to help him sleep through the night, finds himself waking up not the following morning in 1887 but in a completely changed world in 2000. His bed chamber was a subterranean fortress of sorts which only he, his servant, and the mesmerist (who left the city that same night) even knew about, and apparently his home proper burned down on that fateful night and thus his servant was clearly unable to bring him out of his trance the following morning. It is only by accident that Dr. Leekes of twentieth-century Boston discovers the unknown tomb and helps resuscitate its remarkable inhabitant. 20th-century life is wholly unlike anything the protagonist has ever known, and the book basically consists of a number of instruction sessions by the Leekes as to how society has been virtually perfected over the preceding 100 years. There is no more war, crime, unhappiness, discrimination, etc. There are no such things as wages or prices, even. All men and women are paid the same by virtue of their being human beings; while money does not exist, everyone has everything they possibly need easily available to them for purchase with special credit cards. Every part of the economy is controlled by the national government, and it is through cooperation of the brotherhood of men that production has exceeded many times over that of privately controlled industries fighting a war against each other in the name of capitalism.

Bellamy's future utopia is most open to question in terms of the means by which individualism is supposedly strengthened rather than smothered, how a complex but seemingly set of incentives supposedly keep each worker happy and productive, how invention or improvement of anything is possible in such a world, and how this great society does not in fact become a mirror of Khrushchev's Russian state. Such a society consisting of an "industrial army" and controlled in the minutest of terms by a central national authority simply sounds like Communism to my ears and is equally as unsustainable. Of course, Bellamy wrote this novel many years before the first corruptions of Marx's dangerous dreams were made a reality on earth. As I said, I disagree with just about everything Bellamy praises, and I think almost anyone would agree his utopia is an impossibility, but I greatly respect the man for his bold, humanitarian vision and applaud his efforts to make the world a better place. In fact, many groups organized themselves along the lines of the world Bellamy envisioned, so the novel's influence on contemporary popular thought is beyond question. Looking Backward remains a fascinating read in our own time.

I should make clear that the novel is not completely a dry recitation of socioeconomic arguments and moralistic treatises. Bellamy makes the story of this most unusual of time travelers a most enjoyable one, bringing in an unusual type of old-fashioned romance to supply the beating heart of a novel that had the potential to become overly analytical and thus rather boring reading otherwise. He also managed to grab me by the scruff of the neck and shake me around a couple of times with his concluding chapter, quite shocking me with a couple of unexpected plot twists. This great humanist of the late nineteenth century can teach us all something about what it means to be truly human, although I fear that his socioeconomic theories are themselves far too romanticized to have much practical relevance in the lives of modern men and women.