Classic Science Fiction Library · The Podcast Network

The New Atlantis - Francis Bacon

·1 hr 35 min·2 clips

No reader acquainted with modern scientific inquiry can fail to be struck by the numerous approximations Bacon's imagination made to actual achievements of modern times.

1627 opens at the edge of an unfinished work. Dr. Rowley's note places The New Atlantis just after Bacon's death and links it to the years after his political fall. The fragment knows what it is doing. Bensalem appears as a generous, devout, orderly place, grand in the old style but never loose with its secrets. Bacon's scientific hopes gather around Solomon's House, where inquiry has room to breathe and still answers to public need. The future seems to glance back at him: pure and applied science are already visible in the imagined college. Then the tale tightens. Altabin, named as a wise man and great warrior, protects the island by cutting enemy land forces off from their ships. Safety comes from timing, position, and the patience to trap danger before it arrives. Elsewhere, war, time, galleys, and weaker ocean travel leave long voyages to decay. Bensalem does not simply fade with the rest. Its ships, mariners, pilots, and strength remain, so its withdrawal needs another explanation. Solomon's House gives it. Its officers watch scarcity, tempests, earthquakes, inundations, comets, and the temper of the year, then advise remedies for the people. The ending is solemn. The narrator kneels, receives permission to publish the account for other nations, and leaves a land unknown and held in God's bosom. Then it stops. About two thousand ducats close the scene, with Bacon's commonwealth left between disclosure and silence.

As heard by us

A grave ideal commonwealth where knowledge and public duty are bound together.

Francis Bacon's New Atlantis lays out Bensalem as a polished ideal commonwealth, with generosity, piety, public spirit, and a guarded dignity set against the wider world. Solomon's House sits at the center of that design.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a solemn blueprint for knowledge disguised as island lore.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Classic Science Fiction Library