Stop! . . . Distracted People! Two Mirrors of the Future. Romantic Double Utopia

1937 Serly, [Lajos] (1855-1939). Stop! . . . Distracted People! Two Mirrors of the Future. Romantic Double Utopia. By Ludovicus Textoris Serly [pseud.]. New York: Bookcraft [Stamped above publisher’s name: Pub. by L.T. Serly]. 163 pp. with an Introduction (7-9) by Ivan Narodny (1870-1953), who accompanied Maxim Gorky when he came to the United States in 1906 to raise awareness of the Russian revolutionary movement, followed by a letter (11-12) by Bishop William Montgomery Brown (1855-1937), who was found guilty of heresy declaring himself a materialist. DLC, Hathi

The Author’s Preface (13-16) dated 1935 says that the Northern Hemisphere will be destroyed by earthquakes and disappear under the sea while new continents will appear in the southern seas. While this is inevitable, the destruction can be mitigated and a better future created on the new continents. The first section (17-51) is entitled The End of the World or the Tragedy of Mankind and details the collapse. The second part (53-121) is The Paradise of Modern Times and is the utopia set in 2223. It is a version of the sleeper awakes utopia, with the sleeper emerging from a cocoon after 300 years. In the peaceful future everyone is a vegetarian, including all animals, who intermingle freely with humans. The system is egalitarian but also authoritarian, described as based on mutual love and restriction of liberty” (70). Birth control for everyone, including animals and plants. Women restricted to five children. Everyone must do two years of manual labor after graduating from school at 18. Then some continue doing productive labor while others get further education before entering an approved profession. No money with limited time checks for food (seen checks per week) and other goods (annual checks) issued. Much of the text is taken up with the author’s theories of the Earth, attacks on religion (although the Catholic mass is preserved to keep the music that went with it), and criticisms of capitalism, nationalism, and the politics of the past. The book ends with an Epilogue (123-125) that insists that his prediction of a future catastrophe is correct, an Explanation of the Illustrations (129-136), and the Illustrations (137-163). The author, a composer and musician, was born and raised in Hungary and moved to the U.S. with his family in 1905. For an interesting blog post on Serly and the book, see https://gershwin100.wordpress.com/2026/07/14/gershwins-teacher-saves-th…