A Crystal Age is one of the earliest science-fiction novels which deals with a utopia of the distant future. The first-person narrator, a traveler and naturalist, wakes to find himself buried in earth and vegetation. He comes across a community of people who live in a mansion together, under a foreign set of rules and cultural assumptions. He falls desperately in love with a girl from the community, but the very basis of their utopia forbids his ever consummating his desires.