Set primarily in China in the mid 1960s, this work of historical fiction takes readers behind the scenes of the Communist governance of that era, getting up close and personal with Chairman Mao via the experience of his teenage paramour, Mei. Humanity has loads of free time and infinite opportunities for self-knowledge-but what does it mean when self-knowledge alters the balance of existing relationships? This novel imagines what a healing world might look like, as well as how that world could still be a source of tremendous pain. Guns are melted into scrap metal, student loans disappear, and people can grow unicorn horns if they choose. Aliens called “The Seep” invade the Earth and bring with them enlightenment and incredible new technophysio capabilities. In many ways, this novel is the most truly utopian of all the books on this list. In times of catastrophe, tales of doom might be omnipresent and narratively omnipotent, but if we are going to move ourselves toward better realities, we need to engage with best case scenarios alongside worst case ones-and fiction is a place to start doing that. These books offer us opportunities to reflect on what a better world could look like, as well as why that world doesn’t exist. All of these works, however, feature an effort to pursue a better world (or country, or community)-an effort that may or may not succeed, and that may in fact be quite troubling, but that still has something to teach us. Some of the choices may seem surprising, given their conspicuous dystopic elements. The books on this list embody a variety of relationships to utopia. Still another approach revolves around the fact that one person’s heaven can be another person’s hell (e.g. Another approach involves the pursuit of utopia-the struggle to realize an ideal-which subsequently points us to the parallel conflict inherent in losing a paradise (think: Garden of Eden). One approach to creating plot is for a seeming utopia to turn out to be terrible (surprise!). As the author of a book of short stories exploring the utopian imagination- Of This New World-and now a novel about an aspiring eco-utopianist- Eleutheria-I have spent some time wrestling with these narrative conundrums.
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