"Generally in SF stories the change is for the worse, or threatens to be for the worse, not because SF writers are essentially pessimistic, not because change is essentially for the worse, but only because this makes for a more dramatic story. If you write a story about a change which produces human happiness, you come out with a Looking Backward that Edward Bellamy wrote, which is an interesting book but a dreadful story-it's very dull."
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1976 interview included in Conversations with Isaac Asimov Edited by Carl Freedman (2005)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Looking_Backward%3A_2000%E2%80%931887
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Looking Backward: 2000–1887
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian science fiction novel (1888) written by Edward Bellamy, a U.S. journalist and writer. It was the third largest bestseller of its time. Over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas, in the U.S. alone, stimulating an almost instant political mass movement.
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