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Equality in the Year
2000
Mack Reynolds
To Arthur C. Clarke
With whom I couldn't agree more when he wrote in his excellent
PROFILES OF THE FUTURE:
It
is impossible to predict the future, and
all attempts to do so in any detail appear ludicrous within a very few
years… If this book seems completely reasonable and all my
extrapolations convincing, I will not have succeeded in looking very far
ahead; for the one fact about the future of which we can be certain is
that it will be utterly fantastic
.
INTRODUCTION
Almost a century ago, an obscure, unsuccessful writer named Edward
Bellamy wrote a novel.
Looking Backward
, the success of which was as
much a surprise to him as it was to the rest of the world. Indeed, it shortly
became the most influential Utopian book ever written. Sales were in the
millions; it was translated into twenty languages: countless editions were
issued and it has never gone out of print. It deeply influenced such men as
John Dewey. William Allen White, Norman Thomas, Thorstein Veb-len.
Franklin D. Roosevelt reported that in his youth, it was his "Bible." Not
too long ago, when a committee of three literary personalities—John
Dewey, Charles Beard, and Edward Weeks—was named to designate the
twenty-five most influential books published since 1885, Bellamy's novel
was voted unanimously as second only to Marx'
Das Kapital
.
But a century is a longtime, and although
Looking Backward
is still
highly readable, even inspiring to those who envision a better world, it is
very dated. Much of what Bellamy foresaw in portraying his future society
has already been accomplished: much can never be.
So it was that I had decided to use the fundamental plot, the basic
characters, and aim for the same goal as did Bellamy—a portrayal of the
world in 2000 A.D. as it might be if man comes to his senses. The novel,
dedicated to Edward Bellamy, was entitled
Looking Backward: From the
Year 2000
.
As mentioned, Bellamy was amazed at the reception of his Utopian
story. All over the country, "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up, particularly in the
colleges. Thousands of letters poured in, praising, criticizing, questioning,
sometimes reviling various aspects. In defense, he wrote a sequel,
expanding his ideas, going into more detail. It was entitled
Equality
, was
unsuccessful, and soon disappeared from the scene.
The present writer finds himself in the same predicament. Letters
began pouring in—not all of them flattering. In defense, I have written my
own sequel.
Equality: In the Year 2000
.
Though a sequel to
Looking Backward: From the Year 2000
, this novel
can be read without a knowledge of the first book. However, it will do no
harm to have a brief summary of what has gone before.
When Julian West, playboy multimillionaire, is informed by his doctor
that his heart gives him at most two years to live, he seeks out the top
authority on stasis—placing bodies into artificial hibernation. With the
hope that science will evolve to the point where his disease is curable and
he can be revived, he creates a foundation to finance the radical
experiment.
Julian had expected it to be a matter of a few years at most. He is
flabbergasted to be awakened thirty-three years later in the apartment of
Academician Raymond Leete, his wife Martha, and daughter Edith. They
have been given the task of helping him adjust to the geometrically
developing changes.
Leete points out that since 1940, when Julian was a child, human
knowledge has been doubling every eight years, so that now the race has
256 times the knowledge that prevailed then. The computers and
automation are in full swing, so that only two percent of the population
are needed to produce all that the country can consume and ninety-eight
percent are on Guaranteed Annual Income. There have been radical
changes in government, in industry, in the arts and sciences. Julian finds
himself at sea in almost every field. Money is no longer in use, so all his
efforts to perpetuate his fortune were meaningless. Cities no longer exist,
nor wars, nor pollution. nor the threat of the exhaustion of the planet's
resources—none of the problems of his own time. There is no crime, no
juvenile delinquents or the use of drugs.
He cannot believe so many changes could take place in but a third of a
century. Leete asks him to consider, in comparison, the changes that took
place between June 1914… June 1947. the same length of time.
The book ends with Julian disillusioned with this world as a Utopia—at
least for him. lnterlingua, an international language, has been established
and the new generations do not even speak English. The Leetes had been
especially trained to take care of him, as an interesting experiment. But
the generation gap is such now, with human knowledge over 250 times
greater than in his youth, that Julian cannot even communicate with the
average person. When he proposes to Edith, she points out the
impossibility. And he is too far behind, at the age of thirty-five, to ever
catch up. By the time he got through the equivalent of grammar school,
human knowledge would have doubled again.
He says, in despair, "I've been calling this Utopia, but it isn't. For me,
it's dystopia, the exact opposite. I'm a freak. Why did you ever awaken
me?"
Edith shook her head sadly. "It wasn't my decision to make, Julian. I
was against it."
"We are free today substantially; but the day will come when our
Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because
wealth will become concentrated in the hands of a few. A Republic cannot
exist upon bayonets; and when that day comes, when the wealth of the
nation is in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the
best elements of the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the
changed conditions."
James Madison, 4th President of the U.S. Father of the Constitution
Chapter One
The Year 2 New Calendar
Old people's skills, experience, and knowledge seldom make them
authorities, and are no longer critical factors in our culture. The speed
and pervasiveness of social change now transforms the world within a
generation, so that the experience of the old becomes largely irrelevant
to the young.
—Irving Roscow,
Social Scientist
When Edith Leete entered the sanctum of the Leete apartment in the
high-rise building in the Julian West University City that morning, Julian
was sitting at the desk before the auto-teacher. The expression on his face
was one of sour despair.
He was a man in his mid-thirties. Youthfully fresh of complexion,
handsome in the British aristocrat tradition, hair dark and thick, touches
of premature gray at the temples and a small amount in his mustache, flat
of stomach, square of shoulders, medium tall. There was a certain
vulnerable quality about his eyes and mouth which women had always
found attractive, though he had never known that.
She said, "
Bon maten, Jule
."'
"
Bon maten
," he muttered, not quite graciously.
"How goes the study of Interlingua?" she asked in English.
'
Jupli mi legas gin. Des malpli mi komrenas gin.''
"
Pri kio
vi
paroles
? What are you saying? The more you study it the less
you understand it?"
"I wish to hell you people had stuck to English, instead of dreaming up
this new international language."
She sank down in a seat and let her hands flop limply over the chair
arms. "Nonsense, Jule. Interlingua is a scientific language. It works. Take
spelling and pronunciation. They are absolutely phonetic and there are
only five vowel sounds, where most of the old languages have twenty or
more. Each letter has one sound only, and a sound is always indicated by
the same letter. English was a bastard language—goodness knows how
anyone ever learned it, including me. Take the word
can
. It means a
container; it can also be a verb meaning to
can
something in a container;
it also means you
can
, or are able to, do something; and it also means,
spelled
C-a-n-n-e-s
, a town in southern France. In American idiom it
could mean to dismiss or fire someone, and in British idiom it meant a
tankard.
"Or take this sentence: 'There are three ways of spelling
to
." Now how
would you go about spelling that,
t-o,'t-o-o
, or
t-w-o?”
Julian had to laugh. "I admit we had some lulus."
Edith continued, "And take grammar and syntax. Interlingua is so
ingeniously devised that in place of the usual maze of rules occupying a
sizable volume on grammar, we have only sixteen short rules, which may
be written comfortably on a single sheet of notepaper."
"The vocabulary is so damned extensive…"
"That's due to the many new words that have come into the language,
but in actuality the rules are such that we cover several times the wordage
you do in a given area. For example, we carry the principle of affixes
through to its logical conclusion. In English you often form the feminine of
a noun by adding e-s-s: author-authoress, lion-lioness. Often, but by no
means always. You are not allowed to say bull-bulless or hero-heroess. In
Interlingua, the feminine ending may be added to any noun, and so
throughout the language there is no exception to any rule and no limit to
its applicability."
"As you say, as you say…" Julian sighed. "At any rate, I'm plodding
away. At this late date in life, it's a little difficult to get back into
studying."
She frowned at his notepad and stylo. "What in the world are you
doing?"
"Taking notes as I go along. I've always been a great note-taker when I
study."
"So am I, but the days when Abe Lincoln made his notes on a wooden
shovel with a piece of charcoal have passed."
He looked at her, not failing to note all over again the blue eyes, the
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