Humans have grasped the concept of "utopia" for millennia. In his editorial for the September 1983 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, editor Isaac Asimov provided a concise history of utopian literature. According to Asimov, the history of utopian literature began with religious tales about past golden ages or future paradises. (Asimov gives the examples of the story of creation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Genesis as an example of the first and eleventh chapters of Isaiah, which contains the famous phrase "the lion will lie down with the calf ", as an example of the second.) Utopian literature was first presented in a more scientific (as opposed to Edenic or messianic) form by Plato, with The Republic. Utopian literature was largely neglected until the 16th century, when Sir Thomas More published his novel Utopia. Utopian literature continued to be produced, but took on a new form in the 19th century, when it became possible, thanks to rapid advances in technological and other scientific knowledge, to imagine a society, as Asimov puts it, in which “scientific and technological progress” could impose a utopia from the outside, so to speak. Asimov explains: "In other words, while human beings remain as irrational and imperfect as ever, advances in science could provide plenty of food, cure illnesses and mental disorders, track down and abort irrational impulses, etc. . cancel an imperfect humanity. (Asimov 6-7) The human dream of utopia is the dream of a world in which some aspect of what is designated as the ultimate "good", whether for an individual human being or for society as a whole together, is advanced as far as possible. indicate. What an individual author...... middle of paper ......e Fiction Magazine, September 1983. Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey, 1982. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Karamazov brothers. New York: Bantam, 1981. Hilton, James. Lost horizon. New York: Pocket Books, 1960. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Huxley, Aldous. Island. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: philosopher, psychologist, Antichrist, fourth edition. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974. Miller, Walter M., Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. New York: Bantam, 1976.Orwell, George (pen name of Eric Blair). 1984. New York: Plume, 1983. Skinner, B. F. Walden Two. New York: Macmillian, 1972.Walker, Barbara G. "Lucifer" in The Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets of Women.Zamyatin, Yavgeny. We. Trans. Clarence Brown. New York: Penguin, 1983.