Hudson's second novel was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, in Great Britain[4] and the United States.

[5] Whether they wrote fiction or non-fiction, most utopian writers of Hudson's generation placed a strong emphasis on technological progress as a way to a better future; examples range from Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) to King Gillette's The Human Drift (1894) to Alexander Craig's Ionia (1898) to H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia (1905).

Hudson's book follows this approach;[8] he envisions the modern society he knew as eventually collapsing into chaos through its hubris – "For in their madness they hoped by knowledge to gain absolute dominion over nature".

Modern "pride and folly" lead to "corruption and decay;" a global disaster follows, ...a sort of mighty Savonarola bonfire, in which most of the things once valued have been consumed to ashes – politics, religions, systems of philosophy, isms and ologies of all descriptions; schools, churches, prisons, poorhouses; stimulants and tobacco, kings and parliaments; cannon with its hostile roar, and pianos that thundered peacefully; history, the press, vice, political economy, money, and a million things more – all consumed like so much worthless hay and stubble.

In the palatial residence of the people of the new age, "a room of vast extent" has ...something ethereal in its aspect, as of a nave in a cloud-cathedral, its far-stretching shining floors and walls and columns, pure white and pearl-gray, faintly touched with colors of exquisite delicacy.

[10]Toward the end of the book, the narrator applies a dusk metaphor to his declining mood: "All my thoughts, like evening clouds that appear luminous and rich in color until the sun has set, began to darken with a mysterious gloom."

From there he proceeds to an evocative description of the late-autumn world around him: For a long time the sky had been overcast with multitudes and endless hurrying processions of wild-looking clouds – torn, wind-chased fugitives, of every mournful shade of color, from palest gray to slatey-black; and storms of rain had been frequent, impetuous, and suddenly intermitted, or passing away phantom-like towards the misty hills, there to lose themselves among other phantoms, ever wandering sorrowfully in that vast, shadowy borderland where earth and heaven mingled; and gusts of wind which, as they roared by over a thousand straining trees and passed off with hoarse, volleying sounds, seemed to mimic the echoing thunder.

A traveler and amateur naturalist, he regains consciousness "under a heap of earth and stones" and believes that he had been knocked unconscious in a fall – though his thoughts and recollections are confused.

On his way, he encounters a funeral: a group of strangely yet strikingly dressed people, led by a majestic white-bearded old man, are interring a corpse in a grave.

When he is in the library, he discovers an elaborately-carved bottle on a shelf; its inscription states that its contents provide a cure for the oppressions of "time and disease" and the thoughts or passions that "lead to madness."

The utopian literature of Hudson's generation was strongly preoccupied with the prospect of altered gender roles and related issues;[12] A Crystal Age conforms to this general tendency.

[14] Like Hudson's A Crystal Age, Elizabeth Corbett's 1889 novel New Amazonia also addresses a 19th-century man's difficulties in adapting to a proposed future society in which the gender equation has changed radically.