For more than 2,000 years utopian visionaries have sought to create a blueprint
of the ideal society--from Plato to H. G. Wells, from Cloudcuckooland to
Shangri-La. The utopian impulse has generated a vast body of work, encompassing
philosophy and political theory, classical literature, and science fiction; yet
these utopian dreams have often turned to nightmare, as utopia gives way to its
dark reflection, dystopia. Taking the reader on a journey through these
imaginary worlds, this work charts the progress of utopian ideas from their
origins within the classical world to the rebirth of utopian ideals in the
Middle Ages. Later we see the emergence of socialist and