On Dystopia

"I don't try to predict the future. I try to prevent it." -- Ray Bradbury

That line explains why I find many of Ray Bradbury's works to be depressing. He's not describing a future he hopes for, but one he hopes against. It's certainly useful to have such warnings as Ray's own Fahrenheit 451 and Orwell's Animal Farm (I haven't read 1984 having not done so by 1984 and then hearing of it almost endlessly such that even without having read it I am quite sick of the thing.) and others. Some futures do need to be prevented.

Yet it seems that somewhere along the time, the dystopian future became the default. Rather than the somewhat hopeful futurism of, say, Star Trek and such, we got the hopelessness of Mad Max and Max Headroom. At the last Penguicon there was even a panel, "How We Learned to Love the Dystopia." Yes, it's good to have warning signs and know where not to go, but it's also good to have an idea of where we might want to go. Dystopias are depressing and a lousy default. I'm not asking for Utopian stories as that has the two problems of being rather dull and of being plainly unrealistic. It's very easy to poke holes in a Utopia. But there is the idea of a generally brighter future, or at least one where things haven't become horrendously worse.

I am not sure of the cause of the depressing trend. Is it that many editors only tend to go for dystopias? Is it that authors find it easier to write for dystopian worlds? Is it a backlash against futures perceived as too bright and so there is a nasty over-correction? And this is just actual fiction or science fiction, not the Hollywood error of claiming something to be science fiction when it's really just a horror movie set in space or such.

Maybe I do want some escapism. But I don't enjoy seeing dark futures. The "Hey, it's not me." effect doesn't work for me. I tend to empathize, so it's more "great, just what I need, more crap happening." It's the future, yes? We're all going there, all the time. How about a future that can we feel good about going to? Not perfection, not utopia, not heaven, just something that doesn't make the trip seem pointless.

[A bit of amusement: The spell checker I use evidently does not know of 'dystopia' and suggests 'dustpan' -- a substitute I find rather apt.]