On Dystopia

[vakkotaur]

"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.]

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

That's my primary reason for preferring fantasy over sci-fi, the sci-fi futures are horribly depressing 95% of the time. Even when they're not presented as evil, they're generally creepy. In "The Space Merchants", for example, there are no live animals or plants, everyone gets recycled meat from organisms like Chicken Little, which is an ever-growing fertilized piece of heart muscle. Ick. Fantasy tends to go backward in time instead of forward, when things were cleaner and magical. They generally scrub the things like Black Plague out of the plotlines, which I'm grateful for.

[kiwihunter8.livejournal.com]

Maybe Hollywood is full of goths? ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think dystopias are often a logical extension of the author's perceptions of the world around him/her. Unlike you, I often agree with the authors. Worse, I enjoy utopias as well. Perhaps you'd like Le Guin's The Dispossessed which is a mixture of both?

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

If it was all Utopian and everyone was happy, there would be no conflict, which would make for very boring fiction.

Oh, and you'd better not go see "Wall-E" then.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

It seems you missed at least part of what I said. I know Utopias don't work in fiction (I'm pretty sure they don't work elsewhere either). I expect some conflict or else there is no story. I just don't care for the idea that "all things will only get worse, all the time, every time" that seems to have become the default.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

Being one who lists among his favourite books both "Nineteen Eighty Four" and "Animal Farm", I'll point out that "Animal Farm" isn't a a book about the future (dystopian, utopian, or otherwise), more an excellently-written political satire wrapped in a children's book (or so, if I remember, was the intent), "Nineteen Eighty Four" is definitely the bok about the future (this time, a dystopian one), as evidenced in the title, for one.

You really should read "Nineteen Eighty Four", if you can try to separate all the previous things you've heard about it first (necessary, but must be done), as I said, I've listed it as one of my all time favourite books (no small achievement, let me tell you) since I read it in Grade 11 20 eyars ago and it changed my life.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

One usually reads that the atom bomb caused the move to the dystopia and anti-technology slant. I'm utterly behind on my SF reading, but yes, it does seem that dystopias are the default now.

In that respect, I wouldn't mind a return to the days of Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s dictum: given a bunch of people who have fallen into a sewer, mainstream literature will write in loving detail about those who remain. SF will write about those who try to get out.

I think dystopias have become the easy choice; a lot is already decided for you, and you can pander to the Luddites, who feel themselves victims of evil corporations and technology.

If you haven't already discovered them, I'd suggest the works of Charles Stross and Marc Stiegler. The latter's works (David's Sling and Earthweb) may well be out of print, but they are a joy to read, and have a definite skeptical and libertarian underpinning.