Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy Edward Bellamy's classic look into the future has been translated into over twenty languages and is the most widely read novel of its time. A young Boston gentleman is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century - from a world of war and desire to one of peace and abundance. This brilliant vision became the model of the utopia that stimulated some of the greatest thinkers of our age.