I'm studying all the utopian novels this year

And how modern thinkers are taking utopian ideals into the future.

Several years ago I was contemplating going to graduate school. There were so many things I wanted to learn and I wanted nothing more than to spend my time in deep research and contemplation. But when I started looking into programs I realized I’d have to spend years of my income and take a bunch of classes I wasn’t interested in to do it. 

So I sat down and looked at those programs and thought: if I were creating my dream curriculum, which of these classes would I actually want to take? I wrote them all down, linking to each class and noting the reading materials required for each one. Pretty soon, I had a rather substantial curriculum in front of me and I realized I didn’t need to go to school at all—I could simply read my way through the reading materials without paying to come in and talk about them.

So I did—I read through that list in order. That’s why I finally read Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, Madame Bovary, Candide, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, Manon Lescaut, The Nun, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as a compendium of instructional literature about them. I learned so much reading “the classics” and they ultimately inspired my gothic novel and my decision to serialize it via this newsletter. 

Now I’m craving something similar. There are so many things I want to learn and I want nothing more than to spend my time in deep research and contemplation—research that will inform my own perspective on how we can create a more beautiful future, and that will ultimately inspire my utopian novel! So I made a list of everything I wanted to read and study this year—and this time, I thought, why don’t we do it together? 

Here is my personal curriculum for the year. It’s a plan to study, not just the utopian futures outlined by 12 writers across two millennia, but a thorough mapping of utopian thought, as well as how modern thinkers are tackling these concepts and taking them into the future. I’m calling it the Utopian Collective and I’d love to invite you to join me.