Looking Backward is an utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy published in 1888. It is translated into french as « 100 ans après ou l’an 2000  »

The novel tells the story of Julian West (a young American)  in Boston in 2000. He says that he was born in 1857. He wakes up in M.Leete’s house (who find it under his house) because he falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep in1887 because of the fire in Julian’s house. So he wakes up one hundred and thirteen years later. But M.Leete learn him that the labor problem disappeared and the nation proposed a socialist solution of a nationalisation of all industry, the use of an « industrial army » to organize production (people have to work from 21 to 45 years).

Money doesn’t exist anymore and the state supplies people : the goods of society are equally distributed to thecitizens. Everyone has the same income even invalid and prisons have become hospitals.

The bulk of the novel is a dialogue between Julian and M.Leete.

This book is more a comparison between actual economic and technological developments.