''The Milltillionaire, or Age of Bardization'' is a work of

utopian fiction Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to ...

written by Albert Waldo Howard, and published under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

"M. Auberré Hovorré." The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Date

The first edition of the book, published in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, was undated. It is generally assigned to c. 1895; a second, slightly revised edition was also undated, but likely appeared c. 1898.

Genre

Writers of speculative fiction in the later 1800s (as at other times) varied in the approaches they took toward the nearer and farther future. Some novels took a short-term look ahead in time, from 25 years, as in Peck's '' The World a Department Store'', to a century or more (Brooks's ''

Earth Revisited ''Earth Revisited'' is an 1893 utopian novel by Byron Alden Brooks. It is one entrant in the large body of utopian and speculative fiction that characterized the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Genre Brooks sends his protagonist from the l ...

'', or

Bellamy's Bellamy's (or Bellamys) is the name given to the in-house catering service and dining facilities of the New Zealand Parliament. Named after an earlier British parliamentary institution, Bellamy's has been in existence since the establishment of t ...

Looking Backward ''Looking Backward: 2000–1887'' is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888. The book was translated into several languages, and in short or ...

''). Others took a longer look ahead, of even thousands of years (as with Macnie's ''

The Diothas ''The Diothas; or, A Far Look Ahead'' is a 1883 utopian novel written by John Macnie and published using the pseudonym "Ismar Thiusen". ''The Diothas'' has been called "perhaps the second most important American nineteenth-century ideal society"E ...

''). Howard similarly took a long though indefinite prospective view, setting his utopia at an unspecified time in the distant future. Howard's book, like other utopian works that speculate on future technologies, encompasses some elements of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

. In his future, space travel has been achieved, and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

explored; its natives are humanoid, large, and naked.

Howard's future

Howard's future society is called the Bardic State. It is ruled by 26 bards called the Alphabets, half men and half women. Their leader is the Bard Regent, who appoints other officials; there is also the "Positive Poet," the "true poet," who is "the Milltillionaire." (Howard never fully defines or clarifies these titles and distinctions, though the Milltillionaire is "a being of such colossal and illimitable wealth and power, one might say he was a very god....") A powerful state apparatus supplies the needs of the people, who labor in return for "Universal Welfare," without money, crime, taxes, or personal property. Citizens have serial numbers. The people live in twenty enormous circular cities, which have radii of a hundred miles; there are triple-decker highways and monorails. The capital, "Bardo-Cito-Uno" (which was Boston), has fully a

quadrillion Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-Eng ...

inhabitants. The countryside beyond these megalopolises is kept verdant and park-like. College education is universal, and is followed by a three-year vacation, then graduate school. The people are vegetarians (Howard even provides an illustrative menu); they practice free love. They dress simply; since they don't carry money, their outfits have only a single pocket, for their handkerchiefs. They communicate

telepathically Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

(as, indeed, do the Jupiterians). Hypnotism has been replaced by knowledge of the "psycho-omni-magnetic force." Electricity has largely been replaced by magnetism (in some indefinite way), though electric vehicles are used along with bicycles. The power system exploits the "calorico-electrico-ether." Aircraft travel at 10,000 miles per hour. The weather is controlled.

Mega-cities

The idea of the gigantic city was in the air at the time Howard wrote. In 1894, the year before Howard issued his first edition of ''The Milltillionaire'',

King Gillette King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman who invented a bestselling version of the safety razor. Gillette's innovation was the thin, inexpensive, disposable blade of stamped steel. Gillette is often err ...

had published his first utopian work, '' The Human Drift''. In that book, Gillette proposed an enormous metropolis near

Niagara Falls Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, ...

for tens of millions of residents, surrounded by a preserved natural environment.

Assessment

''The Milltillionaire'' has been called "A very unusual work. The author succeeds, as very few others have, of conveying the notion of the immensity of the future and the mind-boggling rise in technology. Yet the book is not completely rational. It is as eccentric as can be, but very interesting ideas are buried amidst the disorganization."Bleiler, p. 374.

References