Utopia

The Invention of Utopia

The term utopia was coined by the English writer Sir Thomas More in his book, Utopia (1516). More combined, in a punning way, two Greek words, eutopia = the good place, and outopia = no place. Utopia is therefore the good place that is nowhere.

This would seem to lend itself to the most fantastic products of the imagination, unchecked by any considerations of reality or rationality. The wider reaches of science fiction, as well as the fantasies of the dream, would seem to belong to its province. If utopia, by definition, is not and never can be somewhere, why restrict ourselves to the merely practicable, let alone the realistically probable? Why not give the freest plays to our fancies, let our imaginations ...