Xen: Ancient English Edition by D.J. Solomon is a novel that explains how a Utopia in the distant future of Earth came to be. It is written in the genre of folklore or mythology, being a “translation” from the current language of the future, which the “translator” relates in the introduction. The story then begins with the origin of Wind and Water, Fire, and life itself, including Mankind. Wind and Water observe Man’s selfishness and destructiveness and wind up betting over his long term fate. The reader then becomes directly involved throughout much of the book, by Solomon switching to second person point of view. Hence, the reader sees a stream of consciousness from a Scientist, named Pawkey Seneschal, who considers the sexism, racism, and greed among other problems that fracture our current world.

But the characters change, to a Mother with her child, then the Minister of Earth, and then to an adolescent named Muliebris, all in the future Utopian world, with the second person point of view being maintained. The reader becomes each of these people as they read, so that the reader is one person, and yet all of these people. Wind and Water come back in the chapter called History which delineates the origins of Mankind’s depravity and xenophobia, and finally at the end of the book to settle the bet.

I have often read how easy it is to construct a Utopian world. Just list all the good things you’d like to have, leave out the bad, and voila! Solomon’s Xen is different, because it explains in detail how this Utopia was constructed. And the lengthy description of the future Utopia has no loopholes that I could find. Sure, the book like all speculative fiction requires a leap of faith. This IS an allegory in the truest sense of the word. Wind and Water converse. There are aliens, but they aren’t at all what you‘d expect. And Solomon, in this first novel, invents new terms that are explained in a glossary or Lexicon at the end of the book. There is no rip off of descriptions from classic literature for traveling the stars or planet, communication, and so forth. The work is highly imaginative and entertaining. I hope Solomon has other things to say.