Though originally published in the late nineteenth century, this remarkably prescient tale from famed author Edward Bellamy will resonate with today's readers. A man taking a long journey by train finds himself overcome by motion sickness and thus unable to pass the time by reading. Fortuitously, a salesman hawking futuristic listening gadgets comes along, allowing the nauseous passenger to listen to a book. Though he is initially impressed with the ingenuity of the technology... "Then, instead of leaving me to infer the time from the arbitrary symbolism of three strokes on a bell, the same voice which had before electrified me informed me, in tones which would have lent a charm to the driest of statistical details, what the hour was. I had never before been impressed with any particular interest attaching to the hour of three in the morning, but as I heard it announced in those low, rich, thrilling contralto tones, it appeared fairly to coruscate with previously latent suggestions of romance aud poetry, which, if somewhat vague, were very pleasing."
Author
Edward Bellamy was an acclaimed American author and Christian socialist. His novel Looking Backward is a widely regarded work of socialist Utopian fiction and was referenced in many Marxist publications of the time. When it was first published in 1888, its success was behind that of only Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It inspired a less successful sequel entitled Equality that was more of a political tract than a novel and generally spurred socialist movement both in the United States and abroad. At one point, there was even a Bellamy Party in the Netherlands.
