As explained in the introductory chapter, my analysis of the major instances of utopian fiction has been guided by four hypotheses. Admittedly, their phrasing was vague to an extent that almost prevented their refutation. The first assumption, for instance, established a link between moments of cultural crisis and the rise of utopian fiction. It is of course possible to survey – more strictly than I have done – the rise and decline of utopian narratives in specific periods of time, but the notion of crisis remains a rather subjective and weak element in the observation that a cultural crisis would favor utopian fiction. By what criteria should we allow ourselves to speak of a cultural crisis?

However, there is some general agreement that in Europe the early sixteenth century constituted a moment of crisis and reorientation, caused by the rediscovery of classical antiquity (and its challenge to the monopoly of Christian culture), reports coming from the explorers of unknown continents, the Reformation (which split the Roman Catholic Church), and a revolution in the dissemination of knowledge resulting from the invention of printing. It was the time when Thomas More wrote his epoch-making Utopia. Similarly, there is agreement about the impact of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The secular doctrine of historical progress and the principles of equality, toleration, and reason subverted the Judeo-Christian tradition. The severe resistance to these new ideas is symptomatic of the awareness of a cultural crisis, to which Condorcet reacted with his fundamental essay on the progress of the human mind and Mercier, Cabet, and Souvestre responded with their utopian and dystopian fiction. In China, the aggression of foreign powers, the Taiping Rebellion, and the attempts at political reform at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth century led undeniably to a sense of crisis. Political change and a cultural reorientation provided the grounds for an intensification of utopian thinking, both in the form of political programs and literary works.

The question must be asked whether at present, as several authors suggest, the world is in a similar philosophical and ideological crisis that calls for eutopian and/or dystopian writing.