A survey of utopian and anti-utopian literature:
Utopia, Sir Thomas More, 1517. The first novel to propose a social order based on perfect communism rather than selfish acquisition.
When you allow people to be brought up in the worst possible way and their characters to be gradually corrupted from a tender age, and then punish them when they commit those crimes as men which they showed all the signs of doing from their childhood - I ask you, what else are you doing than making men thieves and then punishing them?
Paris in the Twentieth Century, Jules Verne, 1863. Set in the Paris of 1960, Verne portrays a world where science has advanced to the point where it has taken over everything else, including art and literature.
Erewhon, Samuel Butler, 1872. Butler shows us an upside-down world where illness is treated as a crime, and crimes are treated as illness (as in, "that's Nosnibor, a recovering embezzler").
The reader will have no difficulty in believing that the laws regarding ill health were frequently evaded by the help of recognized fictions, which every one understood, but which it would be considered gross ill-breeding to even seem to understand. Thus, a day or two after my arrival at the Nosnibors', one of the many ladies who called on me made excuses for her husband's only sending his card, on the ground that when going though the public market-place that morning he had stolen a pair of socks.
Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy, 1888. Bellamy's protagonist accidentally "sleeps" until the year 2000, where he awakes to a society where everyone works for the state and gets an equal share of everything produced.
"No doubt that is a very fine philosophy," I said; "nevertheless it seems hard that the man who produces twice as much as another, even if both do their best, should have only the same share.
"Does it indeed seem so to you?" responded Dr. Leete. "Now, do you know, that seems very curious to me? The way it strikes people nowadays is, that a man who can produce twice as much as another with the same effort, instead of being rewarded for doing so, ought to be punished if he does not do so."
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932. We're taken to a hedonistic world of rampant consumerism where happiness is just a pill away and citizens are conditioned from birth to fit into their society.
"Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.
Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time there were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. "We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."
We, Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1923. A stark indictment of communism written as only someone who lived under communism can write it, but with a poetic flare that makes the work charming in spite of its message.
Dear O! It always seems to me that she looks exactly like her name: about ten centimeters shorter than the Maternal Norm, and therefore carved in the round, all of her, with that pink O, her mouth, open to meet every word I say.
1984, George Orwell, 1949. Big Brother watches over everyone on behalf of the Party.
...the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back at him:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
This Perfect Day, Ira Levin, 1970. Technology has run amok and UniComp now runs everyone's lives, in part by forcing everyone to wear bracelets that must be scanned has they pass through all public buildings and transport.
"And what specifically seems to be the trouble," he said.
Chip wiped his palms on his thighs. "He's drawn some pictures of members," he said.
"Acting aggresively?"
"No, no," Chip said. "Just standing and sitting, fucking, playing with children."
"Well?"
"Chip looked at the tabletop. "They don't have bracelets," he said.