Utopia

Author: Thomas More

Throughout the Middle Ages there had been folk stories about perfect places, whether it was Heaven or the Land of Cockaigne, but when More wrote about a perfect place he did something very different. He suggested that Utopia was a real place that could be reached in this world, and, moreover, that its perfection was a result of deliberate human planning. On a (genuine) embassy to the Low Countries, More is introduced to Raphael Hythloday (the name means "dispenser of nonsense") who describes how he was left behind in the New World on one of Amerigo Vespucci's expeditions, and on his travels discovered a land where everything was ordered and right. Gold was so unvalued that it was used for chamber pots, there were no possessions, everyone had enough to eat, no-one had to work excessively and so on. The book contains scathing satire on the state of England as it then was, but what caught everyone's imagination was the idea of this peaceful and ordered land. Indeed, it was such a powerful idea that the word entered the language almost instantly. Why it's at the top of the list: Utopia was originally written as a work of philosophy, like several books by More's friend Erasmus it was intended as a guide to how the world should be organised. But it became so popular so quickly that it was taken up as a way of expressing religious ideas, scientific notions, political satire and more. Within a century it was being used to express political plans. Yet it has always remained a model for fictions, right up to the work of writers as varied as H.G. Wells and Kim Stanley Robinson.