Editing Looking Backward (section)

== Legacy and later responses ==
''Looking Backward'' influenced the novel ''[[Future of a New China]]'' by [[Liang Qichao]].<ref name=DDWangTranslatingp309>[[David Der-wei Wang|Wang, David D. W.]] "Translating Modernity." In: Pollard, David E. (editor). ''Translation and Creation: Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918''. [[John Benjamins Publishing]], 1998. {{ISBN|978-9027216281}}. Start: p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Ni88Ddi_S2cC&pg=PA303 303]. CITED: p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Ni88Ddi_S2cC&pg=PA309 309].</ref>

Despite never mentioning the book by name in any of his works, ''Looking Backward'' postulated a socialist-fueled utopia that "confounded"<ref name="Lynskey">{{cite book |last=Lynskey |first= Dorian|title-link=The Ministry of Truth (Lynskey book) |date=2019 |title=The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 |location=New York |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]] |page=33 |isbn=9780385544061| quote=To Bellamy ... socialism was a tremendous product with terrible salesmen... This kind of utopian assumption confounded Orwell...}}</ref> Orwell, and his ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' can be seen as a dystopian counterpoint to the utopian genre, of which ''Looking Backward'' was a progenitor.{{r|Lynskey|page=27|q=Published in 1888, <nowiki>[''Looking Backward 2000-1887'']</nowiki> became the most widely read novel in the United States since ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''...synthesized extant trends, capitalising on the popularity of utopian visions such as W.H. Hudson's ''A Crystal Age'' and radical tracts like Henry George's phenomenally successful ''Progress and Poverty'' by merging the two forms.}} Orwell wrote of [[Oscar Wilde]]'s ''[[The Soul of Man Under Socialism]]'' that "these optimistic forecasts make rather painful reading."<ref>Orwell, George. ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: Volume IV – In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950'', ed. S. Orwell & I. Angus. London: Secker & Warburg, 1968.</ref>

''Looking Backward'' was rewritten in 1974 by American [[Socialist Labor Party of America|socialist]] science fiction writer [[Mack Reynolds]] as ''Looking Backward from the Year 2000''. [[Matthew Kapell]], a historian and [[anthropologist]], examined this re-writing in his essay, "Mack Reynolds' Avoidance of his own [[18 Brumaire|Eighteenth Brumaire]]: A Note of Caution for Would-Be Utopians".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kapell |first=Matthew |title=Mack Reynolds' Avoidance of his own Eighteenth Brumaire: A Note of Caution for Would-Be Utopians |journal=Extrapolation |volume=44 |issue=2 |date=2003|pages=201–208 |doi=10.3828/extr.2003.44.2.5 }}</ref>

In 1984, Herbert Knapp and Mary Knapp's ''[[Red, White and Blue Paradise|Red, White and Blue Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama]]'' appeared. The book was in part a memoir of their careers teaching at fabled [[Balboa High School (Panama)|Balboa High School]], but also a re-interpretation of the [[Panama Canal Zone|Canal Zone]] as a creature of turn-of-the-century Progressivism, a workers' paradise. The Knapps used Bellamy's ''Looking Backward'' as their heuristic model for understanding Progressive ideology as it shaped the Canal Zone.

A one-act play, ''Bellamy's Musical Telephone,'' was written by Roger Lee Hall and premiered at [[Emerson College]] in Boston in 1988 on the centennial year of the novel's publication. It was released as a DVD titled ''The Musical Telephone''.