Abstract
An extensive survey of utopian and science fiction literature shows vegetarianism to be a frequent marker of idealised societies, which is also overwhelmingly indicative of broader concerns surrounding animal ethics and sustainability. This survey primarily focuses on Anglo-American and English literature—beginning with an examination of the connections between carnivorousness and violence in early, foundational utopian texts. It then goes on to examine the influential early science-fiction and utopian novels of the nineteenth century; the transitional works of H. G. Wells; formative feminist utopias and the later, critical utopias of the twentieth century; before concluding with an examination of vegetarianism’s presence within works of contemporary, ecologically driven utopia and science fiction.
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Notes
- 1.
Jameson, Archaeologies, 51.
- 2.
Cooke, “Utopia,” 188.
- 3.
Sargent, “Everyday Life,” 22.
- 4.
See Milner, Locating Science Fiction, 90–96.
- 5.
Sargent, “Everyday Life,” 22.
- 6.
Sargent, “Everyday Life,” 28n15. See also Spencer, Vegetarianism, 38–69; Williams, Ethics of Diet, 1–22.
- 7.
Dombrowski, Philosophy of Vegetarianism, 62.
- 8.
Plato, Republic, 59, 103.
- 9.
Plato, Republic, 59–61.
- 10.
Fowler and Fowler, Industrial Public, 49.
- 11.
Spencer, Vegetarianism, 85–87; Dombrowski, Philosophy, 61–63.
- 12.
More, Utopia, trans. Burnet, 62. The language condemning butchery in Burnet and other earlier English translations is considerably harsher than that of modern editions. To what extent the exact wording of the citation can be attributed to Thomas More is debatable. However, its sentiment remains consistent across the earlier translations. Ralph Robinson’s original 1556 English translation, for example, gives the cited passage as: “they permitte not their frie citezens to accuftome themfelfes to the killing of beaftes, through the vfe whereof they thinke, clemencye the gentelefte affection of oure nature by lytle and lytle to decaye and peryfhe” (More, Utopia, trans. Robinson, 91). Burnet’s popular translation has been used here for the sake of clarity and would also have been available to, and likely influential upon, the nineteenth-century utopian authors discussed in the following section.
- 13.
More, Utopia, trans. Burnet, 83–84.
- 14.
Jameson, Archaeologies, 205.
- 15.
Sargent, “Everyday Life,” 19.
- 16.
Campanella, City of the Sun, 52.
- 17.
Sargent, “Everyday Life,” 18.
- 18.
Neville, Isle of Pines, 196.
- 19.
Bacon, “New Atlantis,” 180.
- 20.
Bevan, Real Francis Bacon, 295–296.
- 21.
Butler. Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, 263.
- 22.
Butler, Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, 272.
- 23.
Butler, Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, 269, 273.
- 24.
Belasco, Meals to Come, 112.
- 25.
P. Shelley, Complete Works, I, 126, lines 8.211–8.213.
- 26.
P. Shelley, Complete Works, VI, 3–20, lines 338–344.
- 27.
Holmes, Shelley, 208. However, as Andrew Milner has pointed out, the Chartists were a later political movement, and is rather the Luddites who provide the political backdrop to Shelley’s early nineteenth-century writings. Milner, Literature, 228.
- 28.
Later published as The Revolt of Islam. P. Shelley, Complete Works, I, 325, lines 526–527.
- 29.
M. Shelley, Last Man, 84.
- 30.
M. Shelley, Last Man, 59, 61.
- 31.
Aldiss, “On the Origin,” 25–52.
- 32.
M. Shelley, Frankenstein, 120.
- 33.
Bulwer-Lytton, Coming Race, 119.
- 34.
Bulwer-Lytton, Coming Race, 33. Indeed, the eating of animal flesh is never explicitly ordained by God in Genesis until after the flood, which perhaps suggests that, according to Abrahamic legend, humans lived a vegetarian existence while in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 9:2; see also: Spencer, Vegetarianism, 112–113).
- 35.
Olerich, Cityless and Countryless World, 85.
- 36.
Olerich, Cityless and Countryless World, 333.
- 37.
Flammarion, Omega, 198.
- 38.
McCoy, Prophetic Romance, 126–127.
- 39.
McCoy, Prophetic Romance, 209.
- 40.
Morris, News from Nowhere, 2. Morris himself appears to have been a decidedly non-vegetarian figure, with George Bernard Shaw recording having once being served a pudding made with suet by Morris’s wife, who “couldn’t conceal her contempt at [Shaw’s vegetarian] folly.” See Shaw, Collected Letters, 106.
- 41.
Sargent, “Everyday Life,” 22.
- 42.
Buckingham, National Evils, 144–143, 151.
- 43.
Bellamy, Equality, 285.
- 44.
Bellamy, Equality, 85–86.
- 45.
Bellamy, Equality, 87.
- 46.
“Books and Authors,” New York Times, July 3, 1897.
- 47.
Kemp, “Edible Predator,” 15–18.
- 48.
Wells, First Men, 199. (See also page 14, regarding Cavor’s vegetarianism.)
- 49.
Wells, War in the Air, 225.
- 50.
Wells, Island of Doctor Moreau, 59.
- 51.
Wells, Time Machine, 91.
- 52.
Lake, “Truth About Weena,” 193.
- 53.
Brian Aldiss, introduction, xxxvi.
- 54.
Wells, War of The Worlds, 125.
- 55.
“Man under Martian,” The Herald of the Golden Age, August 15, 1898, 94; Harpur, “Martians and Sportsmen,” 540.
- 56.
Du Maurier, Martian, 366. Du Maurier’s human protagonist also frequently expresses his “loathing for meat” (40, 233, 242).
- 57.
Wells, Year of Prophesying, 308.
- 58.
Wells, Shape of Things to Come, 276.
- 59.
Wells, Guide to the New World, 49.
- 60.
Wells, Men Like Gods, 35, 4. Emphasis in original.
- 61.
Wells, Men Like Gods, 169.
- 62.
Wells, Men Like Gods, 108.
- 63.
Wells, Men Like Gods, 73–74, 81. Such occasions include the ceremonial cannibalism of the deceased by their friends and family.
- 64.
Stapledon, Last and First Men, 257.
- 65.
Stapledon, Darkness and the Light, 146.
- 66.
Macnie, Diothas, 86.
- 67.
Wells, World Set Free, 147–151.
- 68.
Later revised as The Sleeper Awakes (1910).
- 69.
Belasco, Meals to Come, 100.
- 70.
Belasco, Meals to Come, 100.
- 71.
Wells, Modern Utopia, 42.
- 72.
Wells, Modern Utopia, 192. “Cattle men” still figure among the wooden toys the Modern Utopians make for their children, however (Wells, Modern Utopia, 150).
- 73.
Smith, H. G. Wells, 101.
- 74.
Wells, Modern Utopia, 192.
- 75.
Gilman, Herland, 11.
- 76.
Gilman, Herland, 79.
- 77.
Gilman, Herland, 47–48.
- 78.
Gilman, Moving the Mountain, 144, 202.
- 79.
Hossain, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag, 12–3.
- 80.
Corbett, New Amazonia, 52.
- 81.
Jones and Merchant, Unveiling a Parallel, 19.
- 82.
Lane, Mizora, 18.
- 83.
Lane, Mizora, 20.
- 84.
Lane, Mizora, 113.
- 85.
Lane, Mizora, 27, 92.
- 86.
Piercy, Woman on the Edge, 39.
- 87.
Piercy, Woman on the Edge, 293–296.
- 88.
Piercy, Woman on the Edge, 100, 151.
- 89.
Piercy, Woman on the Edge, 100, 210.
- 90.
Moylan, Demand the Impossible, 39.
- 91.
Milner, Locating Science Fiction, 100.
- 92.
Russ, Female Man, 1.
- 93.
Le Guin, Dispossessed, 72.
- 94.
Le Guin, Dispossessed, 131.
- 95.
Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 437. The novel’s utopians also possess a strict, though seemingly unexplained, aversion towards beef (see 366, 415, 421).
- 96.
Delany, Triton, 67.
- 97.
Delany, Triton, 168, 172.
- 98.
Delany, Triton, 278.
- 99.
Jameson, Archaeologies, 13n5. Jameson’s claim seems curious, however, given both then novel’s publication date and his own later declarations about Woman on the Edge of Time (see Jameson, Archaeologies, 233).
- 100.
Callenbach, Ecotopia, 15, 35.
- 101.
Callenbach, Ecotopia, 15–18.
- 102.
Callenbach, Ecotopia, 69–70.
- 103.
Callenbach, Ecotopia Emerging, 166.
- 104.
Callenbach, Ecotopia Emerging, 93, 186.
- 105.
Callenbach, Ecotopia, 36, 76.
- 106.
United Nations Environment Programme, Assessing the Environmental Impacts, 82; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Special Report,” 12.
- 107.
Marshall, Ecotopia 2121, “San Francisco 2121” and “Leuven 2121.” (No pagination; references given as section titles.)
- 108.
Robinson, 2312, 416, 54.
- 109.
Robinson, New York: 2140, 132.
- 110.
Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 120.
- 111.
Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 119.
- 112.
Parry, “Oryx and Crake,” 254.
- 113.
Atwood, MaddAddam, 458, 435–436.
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Bulleid, J. (2020). Better Societies for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Vegetarianism and the Utopian Tradition. In: Kendal, Z., Smith, A., Champion, G., Milner, A. (eds) Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27893-9_3
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