The roots of this book go back a very long way. My father, Stephen Jendrysik, the longtime president of the Edward Bellamy Memorial Association, first introduced me to the life and work of our hometown utopian. Isaac Asimov encouraged my utopian hopes and dreams when I met him soon after my tenth birthday. I would like to thank my colleagues from the Society for Utopian Studies. I have shared many interesting and enlightening discussions over the last fifteen years with Lyman Tower Sargent, Gregory Claeys, Alex MacDonald, Naomi Jacobs and Claire Curtis. Most of what makes up this book was presented at the society’s conferences. My colleague and friend Ted Pedeleski took the time to read several drafts of the book and provided valuable feedback. The insights of three anonymous reviewers and the editors from Polity, George Owers and Julia Davies, improved the book immeasurably. Students in my classes on utopian thought at the University of Virginia, Bucknell University, the University of Mississippi and the University of North Dakota provided insights that inform every page. And, as ever, Kiara Kraus-Parr inspired me to do my best.

Books addressing utopia and utopian political thought often start with a well-known quote from Oscar Wilde: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail.” For Wilde, utopia is an aspiration that, once realized, requires us to seek for something better. There can be no end to this pursuit, this desire, this dream. But books about utopia also often start off with an epigram from Max Beerbohm: “So this is utopia … I thought it was hell” (both quoted in Sargent 2010: 1). As a political idea utopia means liberation. But we must always ask: liberation from what? After all, one person’s liberation can be another person’s enslavement. And freedom for some has often required the oppression of others. One person’s paradise could be another’s prison.

Utopia has come to mean ideas that are ridiculed as “childish” or “naïve.” Calling a political or economic proposal “utopian” marks it as foolish dreaming unworthy of consideration by serious people. In this light, the best epigram for this book is the famous statement by the rebellious French students of 1968: Demand the Impossible. Throughout history, utopian political theorists have proposed changes to the human social, economic and political order that seem impossible. And yet, many things deemed to be merely idle dreaming or radical speculation have come true. Utopian thought captures a longing, a desire, a hope, but also a need. Utopians transcend the limits of convention to discover the new, the better, the more just. They seek to “read the future into the present” (Beaumont 2004: 26–7). Of course, this desire has been perverted and twisted in ways that have led to oppression and death for millions of people. We should always remember that human beings have shown a tragic ability to create real-world anti-utopias or dystopias. The Nazi death camps, the Soviet gulag, “re-education” camps, the concentration camps for refugees that appear all over the world in even the most supposedly free countries, “reservations” and “reserves” for native peoples – the list is sadly endless. An honest examination of utopian thought must face that dystopian reality.

Any student who begins to study utopian political thought faces a daunting yet exciting task. Daunting because of the vast scope of the subject and its enormous and growing historical and philosophical range. Exciting because utopian thought calls forth a desire for a better world and presents the student with a massive menu of choices in terms of what and whom to study and where to place her energies.

Utopian dreaming expresses itself in many ways. Lyman Tower Sargent (1994) described literary works, intentional communities and social/political theory as the “three faces” of utopianism. This book focuses on the third face. But the reader should be aware that utopian political thinkers have traditionally used fiction as a means to advance their ideas. The canonical works of literature discussed here provided and continue to provide the foundation for the study of utopian thought.

Keep in mind that any discussion of utopian political thought will be idiosyncratic, reflecting a series of choices, some well-reasoned, some subjective and some, like utopia itself, inscrutable. Inevitably, works and thinkers that some consider important, even seminal, will be left out of this discussion. Students of utopia should be ready to accept a liberating uncertainty about just what constitutes utopian theory. Approach the subject with a light heart and an open mind and you will find utopia beckoning to you, calling on you to imagine the new and create new realities.