Sick of Dystopian Novels?

[Luiglin]

This is true. And there is no story without conflict. That's also true. But it seems like a lot of S.F. these days begins "after the fall." I guess that's more precisely what bothers me. Humans will be human and part of being human is ugly (and by my reckoning sinful) but why not settings where there has been advancement? Why not settings where hope is more than just a spluttering candle? Why not stories of vast cooperation? Why not stories where enemies become allies and then friends? These are the kinds of stories which I want to read. These are the kinds of stories which might connect and perhaps stimulate humanity's more admirable attributes. Stories must be entertaining, or they are not stories. But a true story speaks truth and a challenge to it's readers. I really want that truth to be something which is hopeful, admirable, and life fulfilling.

@Parson - Have you read the Julian May books, Saga of the Exiles and the Galactic Milieu - the latter would fit right into what you are envisaging.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

This is true. And there is no story wiout conflict. That's also true. But it seems like a lot of S.F. these days begins "after the fall." I guess that's more precisely what bothers me. Humans will be human and part of being human is ugly (and by my reckoning sinful) but why not settings where there has been advancement? Why not settings where hope is more than just a spluttering candle? Why not stories of vast cooperation? Why not stories where enemies become allies and then friends? These are the kinds of stories which I want to read. These are the kinds of stories which might connect and perhaps stimulate humanity's more admirable attributes. Stories must be entertaining, or they are not stories. But a true story speaks truth and a challenge to it's readers. I really want that truth to be something which is hopeful, admirable, and life fulfilling.

You need Hopepunk it’s emerging as a genre.

i still think the dystopia ive just finished and loved (Station 11) has most of these. Ishiguro does. Station 11 moved me more than most other novels. Speaking truth and challenging for sure, and that truth was admirable and life fulfilling with a large dose of hope at the end.

Is it about the quality of the story and finding the gems? After this age of saturation of dystopia we may get better sight of which enrich and show humanity in an uplifting light and which don’t.

 

[williamjm]

@Parson - Have you read the Julian May books, Saga of the Exiles and the Galactic Milieu - the latter would fit right into what you are envisaging.

One of the things I found interesting about those books is that the setting could reasonably be described as utopian and while not a perfect utopia it isn't one that has some dark hidden secret but even so there are people who have serious objections to some aspects of the Milieu's society.

When speaking of utopian civilisations the Culture is always one that springs to mind, the books are an interesting balance of an optimistic portrayal of what a galactic civilisation could be like and often very dark storylines about what might happen where that civilisation interacts with external forces.

 

[BAYLOR]

One man's utopia is another's dystopia, disguised.
Lafferty suggests (quite possibly apocryphally), that Thomas More's Utopia was actually an ironic treatise about the unobtainable.

Lafferty's novel Paster Master a future world selects Thomas Moore to lead them to new era, but not really.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Lafferty's novel Paster Master a future world selects Thomas Moore to lead them to new era, but not really.

Interesting. This is the second time More has come up in sffchronicles this month.

Whom Do You Consider The Greatest And Most Memorable Characters In All Of Cinema ?

...we have the question of most famous now... No, we don't! That wasn't the OP's question. That was my point. The question said, "Whom Do You Consider The Greatest And Most Memorable Characters In All Of Cinema?" Where does it say "now" or "among living people" in that question? a time when...

www.sffchronicles.com

Personally I can't imagine why any sane person would want to bring him back to life. Having said that, Past Master sounds like an interesting novel (from a period when - in my opinion - much of the most worthwhile science fiction was written). I will have to check it out.

 

[Bick]

Lafferty's novel Paster Master a future world selects Thomas Moore to lead them to new era, but not really.

Yes, that's what I was referring to.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes, that's what I was referring to.

I figured as much .

 

[Swank]

This is something I've said for quite a while. --- I'm sick of dystopian novels. --- I don't need to see the dark side of people and society, that's everywhere obvious. What I really like are stories that are set in wonderful fantastic futures. Places where people are honorable, sympathetic to those in trouble, courageous, not snarky, live by a moral code, self-sacrificing, humble --- I've probably rattled on long enough. I'm not looking for a Nirvana, I'm looking for progress and good people.

I'm not sure that's really all that hard to find, unless you either judge anything comparatively gritty compared to our world as dystopian, or anytime there are bad actors unsettling the world. Than nearly anything is going to be dystopian.

SF is about the conflicts that occur in the future, and usually ones that have a somewhat grand scale. That is largely for the stakes the characters are playing for - much like a current day spy novel is about preventing a war, rather than preserving the trade secret recipe for Log Cabin syrup. So it isn't surprising that the conflict centers around a past or possible calamity.

What might be more interesting is to decide what isn't a dystopia?
Dune largely involves the conflicts between noble houses and their retainers. The trillions of people in the galaxy aren't affected by it - but they do live under different types of feudal economies. Dystopian?
Star Wars is about a power grabbing imperial government and a relatively small group of resistance fighters. Most everyone else isn't shown, and seem to be going about their business, unless that conflict comes their way. Dystopian?
Cyberpunk (Neuromancer, Snow Crash) posit more people living in a type of fringe while others live close to corporate nation states. No one seems to be starving or lacking medical care. There has been a definite shift of authority away from government and law. Dystopian, or just different from our system?
Ancillary Justice shows a kind of suppressive government that tries to dictate equality among its citizens with uneven results. Dystopian, or just a different value set?

It is easy to note the negatives in a different (future) society and perceive that society as a downgrade. Westerner's do the same with places like Singapore or UAE, focusing on the lack of certain freedoms instead of the standard of living or something else like that. If I was a spy caught in Singapore, it would seem a lot more dystopian than if I were a tourist. SF novels are rarely about tourists.

 

[Erythr]

I'm not sure that's really all that hard to find, unless you either judge anything comparatively gritty compared to our world as dystopian, or anytime there are bad actors unsettling the world. Than nearly anything is going to be dystopian.

SF is about the conflicts that occur in the future, and usually ones that have a somewhat grand scale. That is largely for the stakes the characters are playing for - much like a current day spy novel is about preventing a war, rather than preserving the trade secret recipe for Log Cabin syrup. So it isn't surprising that the conflict centers around a past or possible calamity.

What might be more interesting is to decide what isn't a dystopia?
Dune largely involves the conflicts between noble houses and their retainers. The trillions of people in the galaxy aren't affected by it - but they do live under different types of feudal economies. Dystopian?
Star Wars is about a power grabbing imperial government and a relatively small group of resistance fighters. Most everyone else isn't shown, and seem to be going about their business, unless that conflict comes their way. Dystopian?
Cyberpunk (Neuromancer, Snow Crash) posit more people living in a type of fringe while others live close to corporate nation states. No one seems to be starving or lacking medical care. There has been a definite shift of authority away from government and law. Dystopian, or just different from our system?
Ancillary Justice shows a kind of suppressive government that tries to dictate equality among its citizens with uneven results. Dystopian, or just a different value set?

It is easy to note the negatives in a different (future) society and perceive that society as a downgrade. Westerner's do the same with places like Singapore or UAE, focusing on the lack of certain freedoms instead of the standard of living or something else like that. If I was a spy caught in Singapore, it would seem a lot more dystopian than if I were a tourist. SF novels are rarely about tourists.

@Swank You've made a great point when it comes to dystopia being mainly focused on the perspective of the reader as observed through the lens of the author. The main problem (kind of?) occurs when the lens of the author is far wider than a single community or country. Like in Star Wars, when the lens is as wide as a "Galaxy far, far away" then determining whether the events of the story following a couple of rebels fighting the imperial empire in the vast expanse of space, is dystopian is certainly hard if not completely nonsensical.

It works both ways as the lens can be even as narrow to only focus on "a spy caught in Singapore". What we choose to consider as the foreground or the background of the story plays into our opinion about the story's identity as dystopian or otherwise.

Therein lies my fear of the flaws that come with classifying stories as dystopian. But then again, the flaw only lies in what we claim to be the definition. As initially proposed Dystopia was said to be "Anti-Utopia" or "Cacotopia". I feel it's wrong on both accounts. Firstly, I do not see Dystopias as the Antithesis of Utopia, mainly because few well-written dystopian novels (i.e., Giver) start off with a utopian premise before unearthing the dark secrets that are hidden behind the facade of idealism. Whereas others speak the tale of "Icarus" about modern civilizations that flew close to the sun. It is pretty evident that dystopian stories can embody utopian aspects and still stand apart.

Secondly, Cacotopia is a word that only came to my attention after doing a quick Google search.

an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be. Collins English Dictionary.

With a definition as absolute as this, I fail to see it explaining most stories classified as dystopian by general standards. It seems more like the definition of Grimdark than for Dystopia.

Summarizing my point, just as this world we live in is not black and white. The stories that we create love to thrive in the grey. Whether it's the societal policies or natural disasters or overarching imperial governments or plain galactic warlords, dystopias can only portray "evil" or "tyranny" but never really embody them. Like every other element of a story, it is up to the reader's perspective.

 

[Toby Frost]

What might be more interesting is to decide what isn't a dystopia?

I've always taken "dystopia" to mean something more than an unpleasant future. I've always seen it as involving a society where a large organisation, usually the government, oppresses or tightly controls the people, often dehumanising them - basically, a science fiction tyranny. So, 1984, Brave New World, The Hunger Games or Fahrenheit 451 would count, but The Road wouldn't. To my mind, dystopia often involves a single person - Montag or Offred, say - who tries to rebel against the society, and in doing so discovers how and why it functions. But I may well be wrong about this.

By this definition, Dune isn't quite a dystopia, although parts of it (Giedi Prime, say) are almost certainly tyrannies, and virtually everyone lives in a class-bound society where birth decides position. At its very best, it's probably like Victorian England.

As for cyberpunk, there's usually room for a skilled person to have personal freedom - usually as some sort of mercenary, although Gibson's worlds do include artists and celebrities (albeit often tied into unpleasant contracts). I always got the feeling that there was absolutely no safety net for the poor (like Mona from Mona Lisa Overdrive), and they had no real protection, health care and so on, and their rights meant nothing much at all. But the archetypal setting is callous capitalism run amok, rather than a vicious ideology imposed by the government.

Would News From Nowhere count as an entirely utopian novel? There was a thread about writing "nice" futures a while ago.

Writing Nice Futures

I've been trying to write a space opera at least partially set in a pleasant and optimistic future society, and it's not easy! I don't think any of the following is political, but apologies if it's sneaked in... Part of the problem is that you have to say what constitutes "good". Almost...

www.sffchronicles.com

 

[psikeyhackr]

I am sick of dystopian reality.

I read dystopian novels to cheer myself up.

 

[BAYLOR]

Hm ,1984 as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical comedy .That could work.

 

[Toby Frost]

There's an opera...

 

[psikeyhackr]

Hm ,1984 as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical comedy .That could work.

Put Winston's head in a cage with Cats?

 

[Justin Swanton]

I wonder if the whole dystopian thing doesn't arise from us expecting too much of human society to begin with. It wasn't like that in the past. Take the Canterbury Tales. It was written around 1400 when England was Mediaeval and Catholic. The 29 pilgrims who meet at the Tabard inn are a good cross section of society. They're a lively bunch: hardly grimy, sullen and oppressed as per Hollywood mediaeval dystopias. 1/3 of them belong to the Church in some capacity and all of that 1/3 - with the exception of the parish priest who is a saint - are corrupt. But having so many dysfunctional clerical and religious figures doesn't give the book a dystopian feel since the book doesn't base its optimism on whether significant people are living good lives or not. The underlying social order (and social order is people) remains intact because too much isn't expected of it. Law and order must be maintained, public decency upheld and the social hierarchy preserved. Society wasn't expected to evolve into a paradise. So people were content enough with it and could be optimistic about other things.

With the advent of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Age that all changed. Progress is supposed to be progress in every department: industrial, technological, social, intellectual, even moral in some aspects. We were supposed to be becoming better people. It was all an illusion, only possible because the changes that were happening in politics, technology and industry distracted from the fact that human nature doesn't change at all. We were all shocked that one major European country should wage a full-scale war against another major country. That sort of thing just isn't done any more. We're more civilised than that. Sure.

 

[BAYLOR]

There's an opera...

With Michael Crawford as Winston Smith ?

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

I've always taken "dystopia" to mean something more than an unpleasant future. I've always seen it as involving a society where a large organisation, usually the government, oppresses or tightly controls the people, often dehumanising them - basically, a science fiction tyranny.

Although some of the most interesting dystopias are self inflicted. I've just taken to watching the Black Mirror series on Netflix - after someone on these boards recommended it - and most of the various dystopias depicted are a result of our increasing reliance and enthusiastic embrace of technology.

 

[BAYLOR]

Although some of the most interesting dystopias are self inflicted. I've just taken to watching the Black Mirror series on Netflix - after someone on these boards recommended it - and most of the various dystopias depicted are a result of our increasing reliance and enthusiastic embrace of technology.

Tv Seres Metal Hurlent Chronicles episode Kings Crown.

 

[BAYLOR]

I've always taken "dystopia" to mean something more than an unpleasant future. I've always seen it as involving a society where a large organisation, usually the government, oppresses or tightly controls the people, often dehumanising them - basically, a science fiction tyranny. So, 1984, Brave New World, The Hunger Games or Fahrenheit 451 would count, but The Road wouldn't. To my mind, dystopia often involves a single person - Montag or Offred, say - who tries to rebel against the society, and in doing so discovers how and why it functions. But I may well be wrong about this.

By this definition, Dune isn't quite a dystopia, although parts of it (Giedi Prime, say) are almost certainly tyrannies, and virtually everyone lives in a class-bound society where birth decides position. At its very best, it's probably like Victorian England.

As for cyberpunk, there's usually room for a skilled person to have personal freedom - usually as some sort of mercenary, although Gibson's worlds do include artists and celebrities (albeit often tied into unpleasant contracts). I always got the feeling that there was absolutely no safety net for the poor (like Mona from Mona Lisa Overdrive), and they had no real protection, health care and so on, and their rights meant nothing much at all. But the archetypal setting is callous capitalism run amok, rather than a vicious ideology imposed by the government.

Would News From Nowhere count as an entirely utopian novel? There was a thread about writing "nice" futures a while ago.

Writing Nice Futures

I've been trying to write a space opera at least partially set in a pleasant and optimistic future society, and it's not easy! I don't think any of the following is political, but apologies if it's sneaked in... Part of the problem is that you have to say what constitutes "good". Almost...

www.sffchronicles.com

What about Norstrillia and the rest of Cordwainer Smith Instrumentality stories . Do you think those would fit the category Dystopian Science fiction ?

 

[hitmouse]

What about Norstrillia and the rest of Cordwainer Smith Instrumentality stories . Do you think those would fit the category Dystopian Science fiction ?

Not really, especially not Norstrilia itself.
some of the short stories feature the discrimination against the underpeople, and the ghettos they are forced to live in, so there are dystopic elements, though I don't think that is the thrust of the whole series.