On 6 July 1535 Thomas More was executed for treason. In 1516 (19 years earlier) he published Utopia. These acts were not unrelated.
In it's very birth, and the personality of the author, were the seeds of great ideas, and their destruction. On the 500th year since the publication of Utopia, we can write together to explore the life and death of Utopian ideals.
# History of Utopia
As a Humanist Thomas More studied classical writing. Two Greek writers are particularly important as models or reference points for Utopia:
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who was noted for his witty and scoffing nature.
Plato was a philosopher, as well as mathematician. He founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.
Utopia's original edition included a symmetrical Utopian Alphabet omitted by later editions, but which may have been an early attempt at cryptography or precursor of shorthand.
Sir Thomas More,
by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527 - wikipedia 
Utopia gave rise to a literary genre, Utopian and dystopian fiction, which features ideal societies or perfect cities, or their opposite. Early works influenced by Utopia included New Atlantis by Francis Bacon, Erewhon by Samuel Butler, and Candide by Voltaire.
Although Utopianism combined classical concepts of perfect societies (Plato and Aristotle) with Roman rhetorical finesse (cf. Cicero, Quintilian, epideictic oratory), the Renaissance genre continued into the Age of Enlightenment and survives in modern science fiction.