Kerry

I heard "News from Nowhere" described as a socialist utopian romance, and while it's definitely all of those things it's also super dull and patronising. The main action so far has been the main character, William Guest (DO YOU SEE) wandering around Future London, which has been transformed into a chilled-out libertarian socialist paradise after a mysterious revolution, and saying things like "But how can you simply give this beautifully worked tobacco pouch to me? Surely I should pay you for it!" while all the other characters look curiously at him and go "Pay? What is this pay? Oh, yes, now I remember hearing tales of such things as 'payment' and 'money' being common at the end of the nineteenth century, but their meaning has been fair lost to history!" (I started playing a drinking game in my head for whenever a future character randomly referenced the end of the nineteenth century, but stopped when it happened three times on one page.)

Currently Our Hero has been sitting with a Future London character and having a long and stilted conversation on the theme of But Explain How This Utopian Paradise Works for thirty-four pages, punctuated every so often by Our Hero going, "But wait, how can this be? Isn't commerce necessary for a society to progress?" and Future Londoner going, "Yes, this was indeed the folly of many people at the end of the nineteenth century! Fortunately we have moved past that, as I shall now explain!"

It's dull when Ayn Rand does it and it's still dull when a socialist does it, and the gender politics are terrrrrrrible. I'm quitting.