The original Utopia, as described by Sir Thomas More's Utopia in 1516, was an island secreted in the southern hemisphere of the still largely unexplored New World. The Utopians, women as well as men, worked six hours a day at their chosen trade, lived in extended families, had no money, and selected all their necessities from the 16th century equivalent of Wal Mart for free. Gold and silver were kept on hand only to cover the expenses of waging war (mostly fought by foreign mercenaries) and, when not needed, were melted down and stored in the form of chamber pots and shackles on the legs of the slaves who, conveniently, did the nation's dirty work.

What strikes me as the most oppressive--and familiar--quality of More's island state is the fact that Utopians couldn't escape the confines of their own lives because every place on the island was the same as every other place.

"There are 54 cities on the island, all spacious and magnificent, identical in language, customs, institutions, and laws," More wrote. "So far as the location permits, all of them are built on the same plan and have the same appearance."

More might have been writing about America's shopping malls or Holiday Inns. Or his description could apply to the cities built by Soviet architects 450 years after his death, with their identical apartment blocks punctuated every mile or so by a grim public square, a token shopping area, a pub, and a drab community center.