192:"Light and heat were obtained almost entirely from water....Exalting tonics and enrapturing odors were diffused through the atmosphere at pleasure. Talent expended itself in producing essences and tinctures and stimulants of paradisaic delicacy to be so employed. On great occasions the light produced rivaled that of the sun. The whole atmosphere seemed to be aflame. The effect was magical. The smallest thing was made visible, and all things were beautified in appearance. Men appeared more manly and women more lovely."
224:"an early behaviorist utopia...." There is much "individuality" in Russell's projected social order, but little privacy; the people are close observers of each other. Artists who offend are jailed. Russell places a high value on sexual restraint. "Purity, of all things, was most jealously guarded. The incorrigibly impure were locked up forever. Men and women, as to that, were treated alike by the police and by the courts." To obtain a marriage license, a couple must answer a long series of questions, under oath.
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Squirrels are domesticated. Cemeteries are the most beautiful places in the sky-built land, and birds are lured into nesting on the graves. Snoring, whistling, and bell-ringing have been banished from society. The Sub-Coelumites have exceptionally good teeth; they train their pigs to eat in moderation.
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In
Russell's imaginary country, "The vices, in a great measure, had been eliminated, or had died out." This includes alcohol abuse and tobacco, gambling and prize fighting. "Increase of common sense and practical wisdom was a marked result of the new life." Yet (with the vagueness cited by the Yale
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As with race, so with gender: Russell's moralizing and idealizing tendency produces an unexpected result. "Men, many of them, changed places with women, and became essentially domestic. Household duties, in a great degree, had passed into their hands. They discovered a fondness for them, as to the
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Russell also loads his fantasia with a fair share of oddities. The people of Sub-Coelum slaughter their chickens humanely, with guillotines. They keep "intelligent monkeys," along with monkey hospitals and monkey temples. They add trees and shrubs to the native forests, "to give greater variety."
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Russell consistently contrasts the past of Sub-Coelum, when things were less good, with the happier present. In the past, the nation may have had inferior clergy, and corrupt lawyers, and vain and foolish social customs — but moral reformation has brought about improvement. In this way,
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The book is full of animals. In addition to the squirrels and monkeys, Russell includes passages on bees, butterflies, dogs, horses, orangutans, snakes, insects, and microscopic life. A ten-page chapter, the book's longest, extols the amazing qualities of rats.
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and similar writers. While some skeptics of utopianism responded with dystopian satires and parodies, others, like
Russell, answered with speculative fictions of their own that defended more conservative values. (Pfaelzer places John Macnie's
239:, Russell appears to endorse inter-racial marriage: "Race prejudices gradually gave way, and bigotries. Fibres intermingled and blood interfused. Distinctions were obliterated by intermarriage."
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or a meditation on society and human affairs. The book is divided into 146 short chapters; most are a page or two in length. The style is sometimes elaborate and eloquently descriptive:
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has been termed a novel, for want of a better classification — though it is that unusual type of novel that has no plot or characters. It might more accurately be called a
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It can also be pithy and aphoristic: "Sarcasm was not often indulged, and only then between close friends." At some points the prose rises to a pitch of ecstasy or delirium:
128:. The book is one volume in the large body of utopian, dystopian, and speculative literature that characterized the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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On the positive side, material and mechanical progress continue; the workday is shortened, and extremes of wealth and poverty are leveled out. Even
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other sex they became distasteful." "As far as possible woman was emancipated from menial duties." The country's doctors are women.
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as a "conservative utopia," a book written in reaction to the multiple radical implications of the utopian fiction of
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Russell contrasts actual aspects of
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reviewer noted its "vagueness and indefiniteness...." Russell's imagined land has been grouped with "
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has been called "a protest against the materialistic and socialistic tendencies of the times."
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374:, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984; pp. 172-3; see also pp. 95-111.
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Shaping the Future in the Gilded Age: A Study of
Utopian Thought, 1888–1900
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critic) Russell never explains how this renovation in human nature comes about.
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The
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361:, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.
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348:, Kent, OH, Kent State University Press, 1976.
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521:by Addison Peale Russell at archive.org
346:The Obsolete Necessity, 1888–1900
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519:Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World
333:Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World
114:Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World
16:1893 novel by Addison Peale Russell
423:, Vol. 59 (November 1893), p. 103.
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493:, pp. 43-8, 48-50, 68-70, 110-12.
335:, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1893.
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312:The World a Department Store
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421:The Yale Literary Magazine
436:, Vol. 13 (1921), p. 106.
387:, Vol. 37 (1913), p. 545.
158:A Journey in Other Worlds
383:"D. O.," "In Memoriam,"
237:anti-miscegenation laws
161:in the same category.)
434:The Scientific Monthly
204:, Equitania...or even
126:Addison Peale Russell
29:Addison Peale Russell
545:1893 American novels
210:William Dean Howells
298:The Milltillionaire
153:John Jacob Astor IV
47:Speculative fiction
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96:Hardcover
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399:, p. 20.
268:See also
233:Jim Crow
206:Meccania
202:Altruria
35:Language
178:fantasy
94:Print (
38:English
291:Arqtiq
229:racism
117:is an
25:Author
132:Genre
103:Pages
43:Genre
235:and
198:Yale
169:Form
151:and
119:1893
77:1893
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106:267
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