Republic of the Future

Anna Bowman Dodd''s 1897 science fiction book -- presented as a series of letters from a Swedish nobleman while visiting a socialist republic in America in 2050 -- offers a glimpse of a future New York where socialists have eliminated religion, distinctions between the sexes, and mechanized all labor. Amazingly inventive, with intercontinental travel by balloons and pneumatic tubes, as well as many other inventions, this dystopian, anti-socialist work remains fresh and remarkable on many levels.