This very limited guide to selected utopian fictions is obviously not
intended as a comprehensive survey. Rather, it is intended to provide
a brief introduction to a representative sampling of some of the most
important and influential texts in the genre. In particular, the texts
described in this section are among those that have contributed most
centrally to the establishment of the utopian traditions to which
modern dystopian fictions have responded. Any number of more
comprehensive studies and/or anthologies of utopian fiction are
available, some of the most important and useful of which are those
by Elliott, Kumar, Mannheim, Manuel, Manuel and Manuel, Morson
(Boundaries), Mumford, Negley and Patrick, and Ruppert.

New Atlantis draws upon earlier utopian works by writers like Plato
and More in important ways. However, Bacon's text represents an
important departure from its predecessors in its increased emphasis on
science, and New Atlantis (like Bacon's career as a whole) stands as an
important marker of the rise of science as a discourse of authority in
the seventeenth century. It also anticipates the emphasis on science
and technology in later utopian fictions, as well as the concern with
the potential negative effects of increasing reliance on technology that
would become so central to modern dystopian fiction. On the other

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