The famous novel News from Nowhere (1890), written by socialist pioneer and artist William Morris, combines utopian socialism and soft science fiction. Starting on January 11, 1890, it was first serialized in the Commonweal newspaper. In the story, William Guest, the narrator, falls asleep on the way home from a Socialist League meeting and wakes up in a world where the means of production are owned by everyone and democratically controlled. This society lacks private property, large cities, authority, a monetary system, marriage and divorce, courts, jails, and class structures. The only reason this agrarian culture is able to function is that people enjoy being in nature and consequently enjoy what they do. The structure of this civilization as well as the interpersonal interactions it fosters are some of the topics covered in the book. When Morris presents himself as an enchanted character in a period and place other than Victorian England, he combines Marxism and the romance genre. Morris, the romance character, runs into romance archetypes dressed in Marxist garb as he searches for love and camaraderie and, through them, a reborn self. Old Hammond is the sage of romance as well as the communist teacher who introduces the modern world to Morris.
William Morris was born in 1834 in Walthamstow, England. He was one of the great all-rounders, such as a poet, painter, author, translator, political scholar, social reformer, designer, and publisher. The organisations and movements he established ranged from the Arts and Crafts Movement to the Socialist Federation to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He started his writing career at Oxford University, where he contributed to and funded the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. After the Socialist League moved too far from Morris's brand of freedom socialism for him to stay a part of it, he dedicated himself to writing. Initially, these were stories of ancient Germanic legends, and then "Here Be Dragons" became a series of completely fantasy novels, beginning with The Wood Beyond the World and also The Well at the World's End.
