My Afterdream: A Sequel to the Late Mr. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward

1900 West, Julian [pseud.]. My Afterdream: A Sequel to the Late Mr. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. London: T. Fisher Unwin. This volume is regularly listed as a translation of Dr. Ernst Müller, ed. [written by]. Ein Rückblick aus dem Jahre 2037 auf das Jahr 2000. Aus den Errinnerungen des Herrn Julian West. Berlin: Verlag von Carl Ulrich & Co, 1891. Everett F. Bleiler says it is not in his Science-Fiction: The Early Years. A full description of more than 3,000 science-fiction stories from earliest times to the appearance of the genre magazines in 1930. With author, title, and motif indexes (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 810. He is correct. Harvard appears to be the only library holding both, and they can be compared there. MH

Anti-Bellamy satire. The sophisticated technology is not nearly as sophisticated as Bellamy suggested; for example, the pneumatic delivery tubes are all above ground and pedestrians must dodge under and over them. The hours of work for so-called arduous tasks, which generally are not difficult, are so low that most work cannot get done. In fact, nothing that Bellamy described actually worked the way it was supposed to. But it was all a bad dream and West woke up back in the Boston of the nineteenth century.