The Diothas
| Author | John Macnie (as "Ismar Thiusen") |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Utopian fiction, speculative fiction |
| Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
|
Publication date
|
1883 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 358 pp. |
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 (1888).
The novel begins with a scene in which the first-person narrator undergoes an episode of "mesmerism," or hypnosis, and wakes up in the far future; he has suddenly passed "from the nineteenth to the ninety-sixth century...." In the company of a friend and guide named Utis Estai, the narrator begins to learn the nature of this future world. He is introduced to the massive city of "Nuiore," the future development of New York City; and he travels with his guide to Utis's home in the suburbs. He learns from Utis and others about the structure and institutions of this future society.
The book concentrates most of its attention on the social and technological advances of the ninety-sixth century; and some of Macnie's forecasts and predictions are notably prescient. The one most often cited in criticism and commentary is Macnie's prediction that the paved roads of the future will have white lines running down their centers to divide the traffic flow. Macnie also forecasts advances in communication, with a global telephone network, and recorded lectures by college professors, among other developments that have come to pass in the ensuing centuries. Some of Macnie's anticipations are more characteristic of the early twenty-first century, like electric cars, and rooftop gardens on public and private buildings (a feature of the modern "green building" movement).
At one point in The Diothas, the narrator meets an elderly astronomer who has developed a "calculating machine" that can draw geometric figures, and can also begin with a geometric curve and then display the formula it represents—tasks done by modern computers and computer graphics.
Macnie's future has progressive, egalitarian, and semi-socialist elements. The sexes have fairly similar rights (though only males have to perform a type of national service). Some gender roles persist; all men are given some training in law, and all women in medicine. The majority of scientists are male, the majority of artists are female. Yet women inventors have been primarily responsible for the development of varzeo and lizeo ("far-seeing" and "live-seeing")—that is, television and motion pictures.
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