Earth Revisited
Encyclopedia
Earth Revisited is an 1893
utopian novel
by Byron Alden Brooks. It is one entrant in the large body of utopian and speculative fiction
that characterized the later 19th and early 20th centuries.
's Looking Backward
(1888
) was the most famous, popular, and influential of these; and Earth Revisited has been dismissively called "One of the stepchildren" of Bellamy's book. Yet Brooks's novel can be usefully compared to an earlier work in the genre, John Macnie's The Diothas
(1883
). Both books share some particular ideas (like communal food preparation for private homes); and the concept of reincarnation
is fundamental to both, which is not typical of the utopian literature of the era as a whole.
Like many other utopian novels, Earth Revisited also verges on science fiction
in its anticipation of future technologies. Notably, Brooks envisions contact with intelligent life on the planet Mars
: topographic features are engineered as signals between the planets. (On the Earth, a large equilateral triangle, a hundred miles per side, is constructed in the Great Plains.) Brooks also foresees a vast land reclamation project that turns the Sahara Desert into a region of lakes and farmland.
. He predicts color photography and advances in electronic communications. In what may be the most surprising feature in the book, dogs are taught to understand human speech and respond with a simple code of staccato barks — a foreshadowing of modern communication with apes and other animals using methods like sign language.
that was popular in his era. One contemporaneous source classified his book as a "spiritual romance." Brooks uses several elements of spiritualism in his book, including hypnotism, somnambulism, clairvoyance
, mediumship
, and automatic writing
; reincarnation and life after death are important themes. Brooks concludes his book with a long discussion of religious and theological matters.
Every novelist who wants to send his hero into the future has to decide on a means of doing so. For Bellamy, hypnosis does the trick, while the anonymous author of The Great Romance
administers a "sleeping draught" to his character. Brooks chose what is arguably the most radical approach: he has his hero die, and then awaken in the body of another man living a century later.
When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in the body of a 27-year-old man named Harold Amesbury. He discovers that it is now a hundred years later; Amesbury has been ill and delirious for three months. His fiancée, Helen Newcome, is overjoyed at his recovery — but stunned when he reveals his identity as Atherton. Helen determines to nurse Herbert/Harold back to mental health. She leads him out into the world, where he confronts the vast changes of the intervening century, and beholds the "bewildering magnificence and beauty" — of Brooklyn
in 1992.
Helen Newcome brings the protagonist to her inventor father; together, the two Newcomes guide the confused time traveller in the realities of 1992. Society has enjoyed vast improvement in the intervening century: the city of Columbia, formerly New York, is cleaner, better organized, more peaceful, healthier, and generally better than before. Electrification and mechanization have brought widespread prosperity, and the extremes of wealth and poverty have been levelled. Government has assumed more responsibility: all land is owned by the state, and people lease the sites of their palatial houses. Newcome the inventor concentrates on improving food production; he receives a stipend from the state, and his inventions go to benefit society as a whole.
Brooks does not dwell on the larger political organization of society, though he indicates the world is dominated by the United States of America and a "United States of Europe." War is a thing of the past.
Brooks blends the technical and the spiritual: when Newcome shows the protagonist the new "harmonic telegraph," Atherton/Amesbury speculates about the possibilities of both radio and telepathy. The second half of the book is dominated by spiritual matters. The protagonist has a rough adjustment to his strange situation, and obsesses over his lost Theresa. Helen Newcome grows distressed at her limited ability to help her fiancé, and leaves for a trip abroad. Atherton/Amesbury boards with a widow and her children. The daughter of the house, Irene, was used as an experimental subject in hypnotism by her late physician father; she is a spontaneous medium and clairvoyant. Irene leads the protagonist on an aerial journey to the now-lush Sahara, where he is re-united with Helen. Through psychic visions, the two come to understand that Helen is the lost Theresa reincarnated. They are happily married in the end.
. Brooks was a teacher, journalist, and inventor as well as the author of several other literary works. His first book was King Saul (1876). As an inventor, he produced improvements in typewriters and linotype machines; his most notable innovation was probably the first typewriter that could shift between upper- and lower-case letters. He held approximately thirty patents (in printing, telegraph and type-forming machines) and published several novels, among other works.
1893 in literature
The year 1893 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*André Gide begins his travels in North Africa.*Jerome K. Jerome founds the magazine To-Day.-New books:*Byron A...
utopian novel
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...
by Byron Alden Brooks. It is one entrant in the large body of utopian and speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
that characterized the later 19th and early 20th centuries.
Genre
Brooks sends his protagonist from the late 19th century into the future to experience a vastly improved world. His novel is one of a stream of such books that appeared in the late 19th century. Edward BellamyEdward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.-Early life:...
's Looking Backward
Looking Backward
Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from western Massachusetts; it was first published in 1887...
(1888
1888 in literature
The year 1888 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Grant Allen - The Devil's Die**The White Man's Foot*Edward Bellamy - Looking Backward*Rolf Boldrewood - Robbery Under Arms...
) was the most famous, popular, and influential of these; and Earth Revisited has been dismissively called "One of the stepchildren" of Bellamy's book. Yet Brooks's novel can be usefully compared to an earlier work in the genre, John Macnie's The Diothas
The Diothas
The Diothas; or, A Far Look Ahead is a 1883 utopian novel written by John Macnie and published using the pseudonym "Ismar Thiusen". The Diothas has been called "perhaps the second most important American nineteenth-century ideal society" after Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward .-Synopsis:The novel...
(1883
1883 in literature
The year 1883 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Phantom Fortune*Rhoda Broughton - Belinda*Wilkie Collins - Heart and Science*Jonas Lie - Familien paa Gilje ...
). Both books share some particular ideas (like communal food preparation for private homes); and the concept of reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
is fundamental to both, which is not typical of the utopian literature of the era as a whole.
Like many other utopian novels, Earth Revisited also verges on science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
in its anticipation of future technologies. Notably, Brooks envisions contact with intelligent life on the planet Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
: topographic features are engineered as signals between the planets. (On the Earth, a large equilateral triangle, a hundred miles per side, is constructed in the Great Plains.) Brooks also foresees a vast land reclamation project that turns the Sahara Desert into a region of lakes and farmland.
Society and technology
Brooks anticipates a number of developments that would come about in the decades after his book, including a juvenile justice system that is empowered to remove children from homes with unsuitable parents. Technologically, he equips his future with electric cars and dirigible-like aircraft called "anemons." He envisions electricity generated with solar powerSolar power
Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, has been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar radiation, along with secondary solar-powered resources such as wind and wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for most of the available...
. He predicts color photography and advances in electronic communications. In what may be the most surprising feature in the book, dogs are taught to understand human speech and respond with a simple code of staccato barks — a foreshadowing of modern communication with apes and other animals using methods like sign language.
Spiritualism
In his novel, author Brooks goes farther than most utopian writers of his generation (including Macnie) ever did in uniting the utopian genre with elements of the spiritualismSpiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
that was popular in his era. One contemporaneous source classified his book as a "spiritual romance." Brooks uses several elements of spiritualism in his book, including hypnotism, somnambulism, clairvoyance
Clairvoyance
The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
, mediumship
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
, and automatic writing
Automatic writing
Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...
; reincarnation and life after death are important themes. Brooks concludes his book with a long discussion of religious and theological matters.
Every novelist who wants to send his hero into the future has to decide on a means of doing so. For Bellamy, hypnosis does the trick, while the anonymous author of The Great Romance
The Great Romance
The Great Romance is a science fiction and Utopian novel, first published in New Zealand in 1881. It had a significant influence on Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, the most popular Utopian novel of the late nineteenth century.-The book:...
administers a "sleeping draught" to his character. Brooks chose what is arguably the most radical approach: he has his hero die, and then awaken in the body of another man living a century later.
Synopsis
The novel delivers the story of Herbert Atheron in a first-person narrative. In 1892 he is a successful businessman, married, the father of a son and daughter. Though not yet 50 years old, he has contracted a fatal illness; at the start of the book, he is dying. He re-evaluates his life, to reach a grim conclusion: he feels that he has wasted his life by concentrating on business and neglecting the personal and familial matters that count most. He especially regrets the loss of his first love, a woman named Theresa, who died young after he abandoned her. On his deathbed, he feels himself "alone in the vast vacuity of space, a naked, shivering soul. A deep darkness of horror engulfed me. I could endure no more."When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in the body of a 27-year-old man named Harold Amesbury. He discovers that it is now a hundred years later; Amesbury has been ill and delirious for three months. His fiancée, Helen Newcome, is overjoyed at his recovery — but stunned when he reveals his identity as Atherton. Helen determines to nurse Herbert/Harold back to mental health. She leads him out into the world, where he confronts the vast changes of the intervening century, and beholds the "bewildering magnificence and beauty" — of Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
in 1992.
Helen Newcome brings the protagonist to her inventor father; together, the two Newcomes guide the confused time traveller in the realities of 1992. Society has enjoyed vast improvement in the intervening century: the city of Columbia, formerly New York, is cleaner, better organized, more peaceful, healthier, and generally better than before. Electrification and mechanization have brought widespread prosperity, and the extremes of wealth and poverty have been levelled. Government has assumed more responsibility: all land is owned by the state, and people lease the sites of their palatial houses. Newcome the inventor concentrates on improving food production; he receives a stipend from the state, and his inventions go to benefit society as a whole.
Brooks does not dwell on the larger political organization of society, though he indicates the world is dominated by the United States of America and a "United States of Europe." War is a thing of the past.
Brooks blends the technical and the spiritual: when Newcome shows the protagonist the new "harmonic telegraph," Atherton/Amesbury speculates about the possibilities of both radio and telepathy. The second half of the book is dominated by spiritual matters. The protagonist has a rough adjustment to his strange situation, and obsesses over his lost Theresa. Helen Newcome grows distressed at her limited ability to help her fiancé, and leaves for a trip abroad. Atherton/Amesbury boards with a widow and her children. The daughter of the house, Irene, was used as an experimental subject in hypnotism by her late physician father; she is a spontaneous medium and clairvoyant. Irene leads the protagonist on an aerial journey to the now-lush Sahara, where he is re-united with Helen. Through psychic visions, the two come to understand that Helen is the lost Theresa reincarnated. They are happily married in the end.
The author
Byron Alden Brooks (1845–1911) was a native New Yorker, born in the small town of Theresa (a name that he employs for important characters in Earth Revisited). He was educated at Wesleyan UniversityWesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
. Brooks was a teacher, journalist, and inventor as well as the author of several other literary works. His first book was King Saul (1876). As an inventor, he produced improvements in typewriters and linotype machines; his most notable innovation was probably the first typewriter that could shift between upper- and lower-case letters. He held approximately thirty patents (in printing, telegraph and type-forming machines) and published several novels, among other works.