A Modern Utopia

Who else could dream up “A Modern Utopia” (1905) as a parallel world in the space of his mind, lightyears away in the Universe, with Utopian selves as inhabitants, but H.G. Wells? No one but this science fiction writer of all science fiction writers, although he is better known for other works, including “The Time Machine” (1895), “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1896), “The Invisible Man” (1897), and “The First Men in the Moon” (1901). It is a collection that is a tour de force. We do not get to meet the storyteller’s Utopian self until well into the novel, after Wells has had good time to develop the idea of this geographically and biologically replicated Earth and what in his recounting makes it utopian. Then, when his protagonist does meet his Utopian self after a Utopian State-sponsor…