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Utopian Wasteland: Abundance, Futurity, and the ‘Golden Age’ in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End
Jerome Cox-Strong, University of Manchester
Introduction While contemporary discourse on utopia complexifies, its etymology remains distinct. The double meaning laid out in Thomas More’s eponymous Utopia (1551) is, by now, well established, inferring both outopia – ‘fusing the Greek adverb ou – “not” – with the noun topos – “place”’ (Logan 2011: 1) and eutopia – the ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’ place. This neologism anticipated a genre that emerged from More’s text, utopian fiction-as-travel writing focused on a ‘voyage of discovery,’ as described in Utopia: The History of An Idea (Claeys 2020: 63). Yet emerging utopian travel narratives were, in spirit, perhaps not so new, as Claeys further suggests: ‘the mythical, fabulous, or extraordinary voyage is nearly as old as travel itself, and the lines between religious narrative, legend, fantasy, mariner’s tale and downright lie are often impossible to draw’ (63). Where more contemporary utopias have evolved seafaring discoveries into a more complex web of possible narrative pivots, entrenching the genre’s now almost-inextricable overlap with science fiction – utopias as found in different times, on different planets, and featuring different species altogether – the notion of discovery remains present. Indeed, the sheer act of metatextual encounter with the text might itself be framed as an encounter with alternative political models themselves categorised as forms of utopia. Yet this entrenchment of discovery begets the question, and as such contention: what, precisely, is being discovered? More simply put: what defines a “utopia” as utopia; more broadly, what defines the adjacent political configuration of utopian-ism? On this, more distinct bodies of discourse begin to emerge. In expanding on his broader account of utopian literary history, Claeys’ own reading anticipates a broader tract of utopian theory that rejects the notion that utopia is, or should be read as, perfect: Nor does utopia mean the search for the ‘perfect’ life, though it is still frequently confused with this; perfection is an essentially theological concept which, while historically linked to utopianism, defines a state that is impossible for mortals to attain in this life. (16)
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