Return to ResourcesQuestions for News from Nowhere, Chapters 7 through 15:
Chapter 7:
1. What is the new society's attitude towards prisons? What does Dick find surprising in Guest's question about the existence of prisons? How is this a change from Morris's time?
2. What is significant about the fact that Dick doesn't understand why the Trafalgar Square art museum is called the "National Gallery"?
3. What has changed the nature of factory work in the new society? What has happened to attitudes towards manual labor (e. g. road repairing) and towards work in general?
Chapter 8:
4. Why has the British Museum been preserved?
Chapter 9:
5. What seems Guest's relation to Dick's elderly kinsman? What has happened to familial/sexual relations in the new society? What change does this represent from the attitudes and laws of 1890?
6. How are children cared for in the new society? What has happened to the rule of convention?
7. What has happened to the nineteenth century feminists' hope that women might be members of Parliament?
8. Under what conditions do the women of the new society bear children? To readers of 1890, how would this have seemed different?
Chapter 10:
9. What has happened to London, as it was in 1890? How is population distributed throughout the countryside?
10. How do the dwellers in the new society commemorate their history? Which features of the past do they chose to remember?
11. What is the condition of the "City," the former business district? What has happened to Britain's position as the center of finance and empire? What caused the city to depopulate? How did people's lives change when outside the megapolis? What kinds of buildings and inhabitants are now found in the countryside?
12. Has the population increased between 1890 and 2060? How do the members of the new society deal with issues of population control? What attitudes are expressed toward emigration?
13. What is the purpose of wildlands and forests in the new society?
Chapter 11:
14. What has happened to government? To the army, navy, and police? Why are these little needed? What analysis does Old Hammond give of the government and law courts of his day? What does he think is wrong with the argument that armies protect the common people in time of war?
Chapter 12: Concerning the Arrangement of Life:
15. What changes have occurred in matters of passion and violence? In your view, is there evidence that an unpossessive society would be less violent? What roles take the place of the former government in the new society?
Chapter 14: How Matters Are Managed:
16. What does Hammond think was wrong with the idea of nationalism? What has happened to it in the new society? How does majority rule work? What would have been new about Morris's ideas in 1890?
Chapter 15: On the Lack of Incentive to Labour:
17. How have the motives of work changed since the nineteenth century? What critique does Old Hammond give of imperialism? Which events of recent British history lie behind these remarks? According to him, what did nineteenth century society do best?
18. What with all these changes has happened to the United States?!