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A Modern Utopia Introduction: The Owner of the Voice · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Introduction to a Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information, not to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: A note to the reader. This book is, in all
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  Speaker 1: probability the last of a series of writings, of which,
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  Speaker 1: disregarding certain earlier disconnected essays, my Anticipations was the beginning. Originally,
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  Speaker 1: I intended Anticipations to be my sole digression for my art,
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  Speaker 1: or trade, or what you will of an imaginative writer.
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  Speaker 1: I wrote that book in order to clear up the
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  Speaker 1: muddle in my own mind about innumerable social and political questions,
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  Speaker 1: questions I could not keep out of my work, which
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  Speaker 1: it distressed me to touch upon in a stupid, haphazard way,
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  Speaker 1: and which no one, so far as I knew, had
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  Speaker 1: handled in a manner to satisfy my needs. But Anticipations
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  Speaker 1: did not achieve its end. I have a slow, constructive,
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  Speaker 1: hesitating sort of mind, and when I emerged from that undertaking,
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  Speaker 1: I found I had still most of my questions to
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  Speaker 1: state and solve in mankind and the making. Therefore, I
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  Speaker 1: tried to review the social organization in a different way,
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  Speaker 1: to consider it as an educational process instead of dealing
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  Speaker 1: with it as a thing with future history. And if
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  Speaker 1: I made this second book even less satisfactory from a
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  Speaker 1: literary standpoint than the former, and this is my opinion,
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  Speaker 1: I blundered, I think more edifyingly, at least from the
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  Speaker 1: point of view of my own instruction. I ventured upon
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  Speaker 1: several themes with a greater frankness than I had used
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  Speaker 1: in anticipations. I came out of that second effort guilty
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  Speaker 1: of much rash writing, but with a considerable development of
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  Speaker 1: formed opinion. In many matters I I had shaped out
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  Speaker 1: at last a certain personal certitude upon which I feel
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  Speaker 1: I shall go for the rest of my days. In
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  Speaker 1: this present book, I have tried to settle accounts with
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  Speaker 1: the number of issues left over or opened up by
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  Speaker 1: its two predecessors, to correct them in some particulars, and
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  Speaker 1: to give the general picture of a utopia that has
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  Speaker 1: grown up in my mind during the course of these speculations,
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  Speaker 1: as a state of affairs at once possible and more
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  Speaker 1: desirable than the world in which I live. But this
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  Speaker 1: book has brought me back to imaginative writing. Again. In
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  Speaker 1: its two predecessors, the treatment of social organization had been
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  Speaker 1: purely objective. Here my intention has been a little wider
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  Speaker 1: and deeper, in that I have tried to present not
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  Speaker 1: simply an ideal, but an ideal in reaction with two personalities. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: since this may be the last book of the kind
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  Speaker 1: I shall ever publish, I have written into it as
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  Speaker 1: well as I can the heretical metaphysicals case cracticism upon
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  Speaker 1: which all my thinking rests, and I have inserted certain
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  Speaker 1: sections reflecting upon the established methods of sociological and economic science.
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  Speaker 1: The last four words will not attract the butterfly reader.
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  Speaker 1: I know. I have done my best to make the
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  Speaker 1: whole of this book as lucid and entertaining as its
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  Speaker 1: matter permits, because I want it read by as many
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  Speaker 1: people as possible. But I do not promise anything but
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  Speaker 1: rage and confusion to him who proposes to glance through
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  Speaker 1: my pages just to see if I agree with him,
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  Speaker 1: or to begin in the middle, or to read without
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  Speaker 1: a constantly alert attention. If you are not already a
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  Speaker 1: little interested and open minded with regard to social and
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  Speaker 1: political questions, and a little exercised and self examination, you
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  Speaker 1: will find neither interest nor pleasure here. If your mind
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  Speaker 1: is made up upon such issues, your time will be
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  Speaker 1: wasted on these pages. And even if you are a
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  Speaker 1: willing reader, you may require a little patience for the
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  Speaker 1: peculiar method I have this time I am adopted. That
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  Speaker 1: method assumes an air of haphazard, but it is not
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  Speaker 1: so careless as it seems. I believe it to be,
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  Speaker 1: even now that I am through with the book. The
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  Speaker 1: best way to a sort of lucid vagueness, which has
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  Speaker 1: always been my intention in this matter. I tried over
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  Speaker 1: several beginnings of a utopian book. Before I adopted this.
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  Speaker 1: I rejected from the outset the form of an argumentative essay,
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  Speaker 1: the form which appeals most readily to what is called
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  Speaker 1: the serious reader, the reader who is offered no more
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  Speaker 1: than the solemnly impatient parasite of great questions. He likes
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  Speaker 1: everything in hard, heavy lines, black and white, yes and no,
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  Speaker 1: because he does not understand how much there is that
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  Speaker 1: cannot be presented at all in that way. Wherever there
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  Speaker 1: is any effect of obliquity, of incommensurables, wherever there is
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  Speaker 1: any levity or humor or difficulty of multiplex presentation, who
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  Speaker 1: refuses attention mentally. He seems to be built up upon
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  Speaker 1: an invincible assumption that the spirit of creation cannot count
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  Speaker 1: beyond two. He deals only in alternatives such readers. I
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  Speaker 1: have resolved not to attempt to please here, even if
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  Speaker 1: I presented all my tri clinic crystals as systems of cubes. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: I felt it would not be worth doing. But having
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  Speaker 1: rejected the serious essay as a form, I was still
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  Speaker 1: greatly exercised. I spent some vacillating months over the scheme
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  Speaker 1: of this book. I tried first to recognize method of
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  Speaker 1: viewing questions from divergent points that has always attracted me,
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  Speaker 1: and which I have never succeeded in using the discussion novel,
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  Speaker 1: after the fashion of Peacock's and mister Mallock's development of
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  Speaker 1: the Ancient dialogue. But this encumbered me with unnecessary characters
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  Speaker 1: and the inevitable complications of intrigue among them, and I
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  Speaker 1: abandoned it. After that, I tried to cast the thing
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  Speaker 1: into a shape resembling a little the double personality of
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  Speaker 1: Boswell's Johnson, a sort of interplay between monologue and commentator.
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  Speaker 1: But that too, although it got nearer to the quality
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  Speaker 1: I sought finally failed. Then I hesitated over what one
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  Speaker 1: might call hard narrative. It will be evident to the
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  Speaker 1: experienced reader that by emitting certain speculative and metaphysical elements,
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  Speaker 1: and by elaborating incident, this book might have been reduced
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  Speaker 1: to a straightforward story. But I did not want to
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  Speaker 1: omit as much. On this occasion, I did not see
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  Speaker 1: why I should always pander to the vulgar appetite for
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  Speaker 1: stark stories, And in short, I made it this. I
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  Speaker 1: explain all this in order to make it clear to
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  Speaker 1: the reader that, however queer this book appears, at the
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  Speaker 1: first examination, it is the outcome of trial and deliberation.
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  Speaker 1: It is intended to be as it is. I am
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  Speaker 1: aiming throughout at a sort of short silk texture between
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  Speaker 1: philosophical discussion on the one hand, an imaginative narrative on
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  Speaker 1: the other. H. G. Wells a modern utopia, the owner
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  Speaker 1: of the voice. There are works, and this is one
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  Speaker 1: of them that are best begun with a portrait of
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  Speaker 1: the author. And here, indeed, because of a very natural misunderstanding,
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  Speaker 1: this is the only cause to take throughout these papers
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  Speaker 1: sounds a note, a distinctive and personal note a note
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  Speaker 1: that tends at times towards stridency. And all that is not,
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  Speaker 1: as these words are in italics, is in one voice. Now,
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  Speaker 1: this voice, and this is the peculiarity of the matter,
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  Speaker 1: is not to be taken as the voice of the
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  Speaker 1: ostensible author who fathers these pages. You have to clear
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  Speaker 1: your mind of any preconceptions in that respect, the owner
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  Speaker 1: of the voice. You must figure to yourself as a
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  Speaker 1: whitish plump man, a little under the middle size and age,
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  Speaker 1: with such blue eyes as many arish men have, and
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  Speaker 1: agile in his movements, and with a slight tonsorial baldness.
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  Speaker 1: A penny might cover it of the crown. His front
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  Speaker 1: is convex, he droops at times like most of us,
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  Speaker 1: but for the greater part he bears himself as valiantly
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  Speaker 1: as a sparrow. Occasionally his hand flies out with a
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  Speaker 1: fluttering gesture of illustration. And his voice, which is our
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  Speaker 1: medium henceforth, is an unattractive tenor that becomes at times aggressive.
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  Speaker 1: Him you must imagine as sitting at the table reading
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  Speaker 1: a manuscript about Utopias, a manuscript he holds in two
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  Speaker 1: hands that are just a little fat at the wrist.
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  Speaker 1: The curtain rises upon him so. But afterwards, if the
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  Speaker 1: devices of this declining art of literature prevail, you will
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  Speaker 1: go with him through curious and interesting experiences. Yet ever
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  Speaker 1: and again you will find him back at that little table,
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  Speaker 1: the manuscript in his hand, and the expansion of his
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  Speaker 1: ratiocinations about utopia conscientiously resumed. The entertainment before you is
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  Speaker 1: neither the set drama of the work of fiction you
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  Speaker 1: are accustomed to read, nor the set lecturing of the
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  Speaker 1: essay you are accustomed to evade, but a hybrid of
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  Speaker 1: these two. If you figure this owner of the voice
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  Speaker 1: is sitting a little nervously, a little modestly on a
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  Speaker 1: stage with table, glass of water, and all complete, and
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  Speaker 1: myself as the intrinsic chairman, insisting with the black ruthlessness
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  Speaker 1: upon his few words of introduction, before he recedes into
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  Speaker 1: the wings. And if furthermore you figure a sheet before
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  Speaker 1: our friend on which moving pictures intermittedly appear, And if
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  Speaker 1: finally you suppose his subject to be the story the
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  Speaker 1: adventure of his soul among utopian inquiries, he will be
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  Speaker 1: prepared for some at least of the difficulties of this
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  Speaker 1: unworthy but unusual work. But over against this writer here presented.
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  Speaker 1: There is also another earthly person in the book, bathers
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  Speaker 1: himself together in a distinct personality only after a preliminary
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  Speaker 1: complication with the reader. This person is spoken of as
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  Speaker 1: the Botanist, and he is a leaner, rather taller, graver,
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  Speaker 1: and much less garrulous man. His face is weakly handsome
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  Speaker 1: and done in tones of gray. He is fairish and
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  Speaker 1: gray eyed, and you would suspect him of dyspepsia. It
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  Speaker 1: is a justifiable suspicion. Men of this type, the chairman remarks,
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  Speaker 1: with the sudden intrusion of exposition, are romantic with a
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  Speaker 1: shadow of meanness. They secret wants to conceal and shape
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  Speaker 1: their sensuous cravings beneath egregious sentimentalities. They get into mighty
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  Speaker 1: tangles and troubles with women. And he has had his troubles.
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  Speaker 1: You will hear of them, for that is the quality
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  Speaker 1: of his type. He gets no personal expression in this book.
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  Speaker 1: The voice is always that others, But you gather much
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  Speaker 1: of the matter and something of the man of his
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  Speaker 1: interpolations from the asides and the tenor of the voice.
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  Speaker 1: So much by way of portraiture is necessary to present
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  Speaker 1: the explorers of the modern utopia, which will unfold itself
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  Speaker 1: as a background to these two inquiring figures. The image
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  Speaker 1: of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp. There
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  Speaker 1: will be an effect of these two people going to
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  Speaker 1: and fro in front of the circle of a rather
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  Speaker 1: defective lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of focus,
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  Speaker 1: but which does occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen
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  Speaker 1: a momentary moving picture of utopian conditions. Occasionally the picture
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  Speaker 1: goes out altogether. The voice argues and argues, and the
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  Speaker 1: lights return, and then you find yourself listening again to
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  Speaker 1: the rather too plump little man at his table, laboriously
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  Speaker 1: enunciating propositions upon whom the curtain rises. Now. End of introduction.