ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the spatial writing of traditional utopian writers and contrasts it with that of current meta-utopian thought, to trace the causes for this nearly universal pessimism. It analyzes Osmonde's attempt at a utopian solution. A century after this optimistic polemic in Zamiatin's We between the novel's female rebel leader and the head scientist of the One State, the mood of postmodern meta-utopian writers in Europe, North America, and Russia has soured. Plato's utopia was designed on a small scale in order to illustrate that embracing the values of truth and justice could make individuals happier. But in the context of growing secularism, the most profound reason for the essentially pessimistic outlook in current meta-utopian thought is grave doubt about the possibility of restoring some sense of wholeness and social cohesion that in principle would be called upon to deal with the consequences of the eventual disparity between meeting real needs and the carrying capacity of our planet.
