Olerich, Henry
"A cityless and countryless world : An outline of practical cooperative…." by Henry Olerich is a utopian novel written in the late 19th century. It presents a visionary program of “practical co‑operative individualism” through the account of a Martian visitor who contrasts his advanced, harmonious society with Earth’s wasteful cities and isolated farms. The work lays out a full social and economic design—large communal “big-houses,” electrified infrastructure, efficient agriculture, rational education, voluntary governance, and equitable sex relations and property norms—aimed at maximizing freedom, health, and happiness. The opening of this work begins with a preface that applauds scientific achievements while indicting pervasive social evils, and declares the aim to outline a system uniting voluntary cooperation with individual liberty. The narrative then shifts to the exemplary Uwins household in the village of Dozen, where a charismatic stranger, Midith, arrives during a storm; he soon reveals he was born on Mars and, after winning the family’s trust, explains Mars–Earth differences, the feasibility of interplanetary travel, and offers a sharp critique of Earth’s poverty, exploitation, coercive government, money and land systems, gender inequities, schooling, and cruelty to animals. He expounds a Marsian worldview grounded in evolution and the nebular hypothesis, then sketches their living arrangements: no cities or countryside, but “big-houses” of about a thousand people…
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