[1] The book is one volume in the large body of utopian, dystopian, and speculative literature that characterized the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[2][3] Scholar of the genre Jean Pfaelzer has described Sub-Coelum as a "conservative utopia," a book written in reaction to the multiple radical implications of the utopian fiction of Edward Bellamy and similar writers.
While some skeptics of utopianism responded with dystopian satires and parodies, others, like Russell, answered with speculative fictions of their own that defended more conservative values.
At some points the prose rises to a pitch of ecstasy or delirium: Some critics complained about the book; a Yale reviewer noted its "vagueness and indefiniteness...."[8] Russell's imagined land has been grouped with "Altruria, Equitania...or even Meccania"[9] (the fantasy countries of William Dean Howells, Walter O. Henry, and Owen Gregory respectively).
Pfaelzer calls Sub-Coelum "an early behaviorist utopia...."[10] There is much "individuality" in Russell's projected social order, but little privacy; the people are close observers of each other.
On the positive side, material and mechanical progress continue; the workday is shortened, and extremes of wealth and poverty are leveled out.
Surprisingly for the era of Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws, Russell appears to endorse inter-racial marriage: "Race prejudices gradually gave way, and bigotries.
In the past, the nation may have had inferior clergy, and corrupt lawyers, and vain and foolish social customs[14] — but moral reformation has brought about improvement.
In addition to the squirrels and monkeys, Russell includes passages on bees, butterflies, dogs, horses, orangutans, snakes, insects, and microscopic life.