Paradise Dreaming: 12 Utopian novels you can read for free today

When was the last time you got excited about reading, or watching, a utopian story?

If you’re like the majority of Americans, and others in economically advanced societies, it’s likely been a while.

Dystopia still commands more cultural oxygen with fresh “best of” lists and election-year sales spikes pushing grim futures into the spotlight. But if you drill back in time, there’s plenty to get your imaginative optimism flowing…

In this week’s Curation, Ink & Time brings you 12 utopian classics that imagine improvement, some gently, some with teeth.

Despite being written long ago, they deserve to be dusted off and read, especially given the sad state of civic angst these days.

Time to get reading, and dreaming…

Deep underground lives a mysterious race powered by "vril," a kind of psychic energy that lets them shape the world at will. They are cool, hierarchical and rational. These people are elegant, advanced, and quietly terrifying, provoking fears in readers about technology, eugenics and “progress.” This strange tale swept through 19th-century salons and seances alike and later inspired everything from Nazi mythologies to early science fiction. If you like wild ideas wrapped in Victorian prose, this one’s unforgettable.

Link: Project Gutenberg

What if sickness were a crime, machines were banned, and morality was just a matter of habit? In this clever and unsettling novel, Butler takes us to a world where everything feels familiar, but backwards. It’s witty, weird, and razor-sharp in how it questions what we call “normal.” Set in a satiric “nowhere,” Butler inverts Victorian common sense to ask what, precisely, is advanced. It became a touchstone for techno-skeptic currents inside utopian thought.

Link: Project Gutenberg

Imagine an all-women society hidden deep inside the Earth, running on science, cooperation, and good sense. Written by a high school principal from Cincinnati, this pioneering feminist utopia lays out a radical, almost sci-fi vision of what a future society could be. Short, strange, and deeply ahead of its time. Among the earliest English-language feminist utopias, it’s a bold counterpoint to Gilded-Age assumptions about gender and power.

Link: Project Gutenberg

A man falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds a perfectly organized world of universal employment, public service, and even proto-credit cards delivered through catalog retail. America’s most programmatic utopia, Bellamy’s vision sparked a nationwide political movement and inspired real-world reforms. It’s idealistic and prescient and sparked mass “Bellamy Clubs” and real policy debate.

Link: Project Gutenberg

Bellamy gives us an industrial future, but Morris offers a pastoral one: no factories, no bosses, just riverside workshops, hand-made goods, and a rhythm of life built around beauty and joy. It’s like reading a dream you didn’t know you missed. Ideal for anyone tired of tech-fueled utopias. Foundational for eco-communitarian and post-growth imaginaries.

Link: Project Gutenberg

This little-known gem imagines a cooperative, open society thriving in East Africa. An economist’s blueprint novel: voluntary association, mobility, open access to land, and economic fairness. It’s a technocrat’s utopia. Widely read by reformers and dreamers across Europe and Africa, it still fascinates readers of political economy and early globalism.

Link: Project Gutenberg

An elegant stranger visits Gilded Age America and politely dismantles its hypocrisies about wealth, work, and democracy. It’s utopian fiction in the shape of a salon conversation: civil, sharp, and full of zingers. A great pick for fans of social satire with a conscience. It helped channel utopian discourse into Progressive-era debates.

Link: Project Gutenberg

Two travelers fall into a parallel world where a global government is run by an elite order of ethical thinkers: the Samurai. This is Wells at his most philosophical, grappling with big questions: freedom vs. order, individuality vs. progress. His world-state utopia recast the genre for a social-scientific century. If you're building a better world in your head, this one will challenge you.

Link: Project Gutenberg

In just a few pages, Hossain conjures “Ladyland,” a place where women lead, men stay indoors, and science has solved war, crime, and inequality. Written in colonial Bengal, it’s one of the earliest Muslim feminist sci-fi works. Read it for the jolt of fresh air and sheer brilliance. A landmark South Asian feminist utopia that broadened the field’s geography and concerns.

Link: Internet Archive

Long before Zoom and AI, Forster imagined a world where people live in isolation, communicate through screens, and let machines do everything. Until it all collapses. This story is barely 12,000 words but hits like a prophecy. It’s an eerie must-read for our plugged-in lives. It permanently altered how technics and dependence are treated in utopian discourse.

Link: Project Gutenberg (in The Eternal Moment and Other Stories)

Three American men stumble into an all-female society hidden in the jungle. It’s peaceful, clean, well-organized, and completely baffling to them. Gilman’s story is playful and deadly serious, probing gender, parenting, and power without ever preaching. Every imported assumption is examined and often undone. If you like clever social commentary with real heart, it holds up remarkably well. A cornerstone of feminist utopian writing.

Link: Project Gutenberg

Instead of laws or gods, what if we built society on behavioral science? Skinner’s utopia is a laboratory of daily life, where work is shared, children are shaped by positive reinforcement, and efficiency rules. Whether you love it or find it creepy, it’s a fascinating thought experiment on how culture could be designed. Hugely influential (and controversial) in social science and communal movements.

Link: Encyclopædia Britannica overview

Ink & Time Curations brings you thematic selections to inspire your book discovery, foster enjoyable literacy, and inspire broader thinking. Get reading!