A huge bestseller in its day, Looking Backwards is a pure Utopia with no dark notes. Like Cæsar's Column and The Iron Heel, we get huge swaths of exposition and a love story. However, because the narrator pops up in the best of all possible worlds (the USA in the year 2000), the story lacks the conflict and characterizations which make the Donnelly and London works interesting. The one part of the story with dramatic impact is an extended sequence at the end where he revisits the harsh 19th Century he thought he had left behind.