Sick of Dystopian Novels?

[Swank]

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

If this is the definition of dystopia, and my little research indicates it is, I'm willing to bet that this thread is not about dystopias. They appear to be actually rather narrow in their content and structure - and aren't post-calamity stories.

Most of the commentary in this thread (mine included) is more about dark futures with negative outcomes, rather than parables about individuals striking back at tyrannical centralized collectivism.

I think it is possible that a broader use of the term would include works where there is pervasive suffering that is imposed by any controlling system - including environmental collapse or overpopulation. These stories also embody a warning to contemporary readers about their collective choices and illustrate outcomes that are essentially intractable. Like The Road or Planet of the Apes.

 

[Omits]

Let's start with the definition of Dystopia from the Merriam Webster:

Definition of dystopia​

an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.


Personally, around 50% (or more) of sci-fi books that I read are dystopian. That is about as likely as flipping a coin to find whether a sci-fi book I picked was dystopian or not. (Even including sci-fi shows and movies). If you were to immediately ask me a sci-fi book, movie or show that is not dystopian then it would be rather hard for me to come up with one on the spot. (Not to say there aren't any, like Star Trek, Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy, Dr. Who) The common theme seen is, if the protagonist of the story is introduced as being part of a futuristic society with no initial conflict, then there is a very high odds for it to be a dystopian novel. (i.e., hunger games, divergent, Dune, Do Android's dream of electric sheep). Even books like "The Giver" by Lois Lowry started with a utopian premise (which I really liked) before immediately transitioning into a "dystopian society pretending to be a utopian society". Again, I am not saying there does not exist non-dystopian sci-fi books especially classics like "Invisible man", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "Time Machine" etc.

What I am saying is that the new dystopian sci-fi books have managed to saturate the sci-fi genre. I understand the appeal of dystopian novels and the premise they offer but I am curious to know if it really is the defining element of the sci-fi genre? I want to know if you had the option of reading a dystopian sci-fi novel or a normal sci-fi book, which would you choose? If you are writing a sci-fi book, would you write a dystopian novel or something else? Would you ever read a completely utopian novel? Or in the end is classifying books as dystopian just arbitrary? What are your thoughts on the matter?

I turn off buying when i read the description along the lines of so-and-so has to save Earth or the Universe. Fed up with novels with few characters and repetitive scenarios. Bla, bla. Thanks for the opportunity to rant a bit.

 

[BAYLOR]

I turn off buying when i read the description along the lines of so-and-so has to save Earth or the Universe. Fed up with novels with few characters and repetitive scenarios. Bla, bla. Thanks for the opportunity to rant a bit.

They seem to be all the rage now.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

I've gone off of dystopian at the moment. I've read some that I really enjoyed and have others on my TBR list (I even started writing a dystopian trilogy a few years back that's presently on hold due to other projects), but as the present reality feels much to dystopian right now I'm not in any mood to read more of it. Definitely prefer dystopian to grimdark or post-apocalypse, but I need much lighter books right now.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I am sick of dystopian reality.

I read dystopian novels to cheer myself up.

I had to read that again to see how funny it was but I am kind of serious. Talking about fixing climate change and economic growth while ignoring planned obsolescence and the depreciation of consumer trash is total nonsense. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have not been to an auto show since before the Moon landing. Never owned a new car.

I wonder how many Americans have never heard of a Bathtub Curve.

Bathtub curve - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[psikeyhackr]

What is the psychological impact of feeling that something is wrong, socially speaking, but not having a clue what it is?

 

[Erythr]

What is the psychological impact of feeling that something is wrong, socially speaking, but not having a clue what it is?

My friend, I think you mean Cognitive Dissonance. (based on your previous comment.)

 

[asp3]

When I think of dystopian fiction I think of the characters fighting against the forces perpetuating the dystopia who I see in a positive way. So for me a dystopian story is one where I'm reading about the "heroes" fighting against it and I enjoy the hope, vision and resolve of those characters and just see the dystopia as the setting. I'm not tired of those.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.
― Cormac McCarthy

How true is this in non-Western literature?

 

[Justin Swanton]

A look at history shows that human society has always been in a mess, in that people stumble from one disaster to another but somehow get by. The was never any golden age (biology and physics make that impossible) and things have never got better, just different (and basically stayed the same). I don't think modern life has changed the underlying human condition at all; it certainly hasn't improved it. It's just given us some conveniences that we turned into necessities, balancing the equation - we have medicine that cures diseases but we have adopted a lifestyle that increases the diseases we suffer from. And we haven't cured death, just stretched life by a few years. I would really like to take a deep dive into, say, Mediaeval England and see how the happiness index of that time compares with now. If the Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare are anything to go by, they sure knew how to have fun.

Perhaps SF has become dystopian because we're losing faith in the present. The optimism of Progress is fading and the realities of the techno-industrial system we have constructed are beginning to come home to us. Looking at civilisations in the past, their best time seems to have been when they were working towards something that they hadn't yet achieved and still had to struggle for. The tough days weren't yet past but things were on the up-and-up, and a bright future was just around the corner.

A society's art and literature is a good benchmark. The finest cultural achievements of Greece were produced after the Greeks had beaten off two Persian invasions but still faced a Persian threat and were divided against themselves, albeit gradually growing wealthier and militarily more powerful. The golden future arrived in the person of Alexander who united Greece and then conquered Persia. But after that it was somehow all downhill for Greece.

The Roman Republic saw its best literature when it had beaten its most dangerous enemies but was torn by civil wars. Peace was restored by the Republic becoming an Empire but then Roman society began to die culturally. The Empire lasted a long time because the Roman army that held it together was a completely independent entity that was a law unto itself, making and unmaking emperors at will, but it was always able to maintain its discipline (the army actually survived the disappearance of the Western Empire by nearly a century, surviving as private formations maintained by wealthy landowners).

Britain at the end of the 19th century was an optimistic place. There was still plenty of poverty and hardship, but labour laws were improving and wealth was growing. One day all the problems would be solved. It was a positive time to be alive. And now?

IMHO optimism is when we're looking for a better world and think we can get it; pessimism is when we realise we can't. My own philosophy is that we're looking in the wrong place, which makes optimism and pessimism essentially meaningless.

 

[Swank]

I don't think modern life has changed the underlying human condition at all; it certainly hasn't improved it. It's just given us some conveniences that we turned into necessities, balancing the equation - we have medicine that cures diseases but we have adopted a lifestyle that increases the diseases we suffer from. And we haven't cured death, just stretched life by a few years. I would really like to take a deep dive into, say, Mediaeval England and see how the happiness index of that time compares with now.

This appears to be more of an emotional reaction to the media we expose ourselves to than an analysis of available data. It actually appears that a lower percentage of people die of violence today than in any other time, and fewer people starve than ever. Just in the last 25 years the earth's population went up by 2 billion but the number of people starving went down by 200 million.

Britain at the end of the 19th century was an optimistic place.

For whom? The merchant and wealthy classes that consumed the literature that they've left to posterity, or the dead poor? No Irish potato farmer wrote a hit play.


People can find happiness in prison and depression in a palace. We rationalize and adjust to our environment rather than emotionally evaluate it on an absolute scale. We become outraged by the loss of our "rights" when asked to take reasonable steps for public health while not batting an eye at mass incarceration or genocide.

I would agree that the mass of people remain just as stupid and short sighted as ever despite living longer, having more children survive, less chance of violence and more social mobility. What hasn't change - we are conspicuously negative and skeptical about our own abilities and accomplishments. Likely because those achievements are not experienced directly by most of the population that absorbs progress as little more than the product of time. Something most humans who ever lived didn't experience at all.

We live in an boringly amazing age. Forest for the trees. Maybe it is just depressing to our instincts that we don't spend every day narrowly avoiding death anymore. So we join cults, get outraged by the insignificant and rant about 'end times' as if any of us had ever lived through a plague, famine or societal collapse. Publishing and consuming depressing fiction media is either our inability to maintain perspective or aversion therapy. Just like in the '70s when we embraced Soylent Green because gasoline was no longer cheaper than water.


Please pardon my lending of perspective. Dystopian and apocalyptic media are the usual response to a little modern inconvenience - in my youngish life I've seen it pop up several times.

 

[BAYLOR]

This appears to be more of an emotional reaction to the media we expose ourselves to than an analysis of available data. It actually appears that a lower percentage of people die of violence today than in any other time, and fewer people starve than ever. Just in the last 25 years the earth's population went up by 2 billion but the number of people starving went down by 200 million.


For whom? The merchant and wealthy classes that consumed the literature that they've left to posterity, or the dead poor? No Irish potato farmer wrote a hit play.


People can find happiness in prison and depression in a palace. We rationalize and adjust to our environment rather than emotionally evaluate it on an absolute scale. We become outraged by the loss of our "rights" when asked to take reasonable steps for public health while not batting an eye at mass incarceration or genocide.

I would agree that the mass of people remain just as stupid and short sighted as ever despite living longer, having more children survive, less chance of violence and more social mobility. What hasn't change - we are conspicuously negative and skeptical about our own abilities and accomplishments. Likely because those achievements are not experienced directly by most of the population that absorbs progress as little more than the product of time. Something most humans who ever lived didn't experience at all.

We live in an boringly amazing age. Forest for the trees. Maybe it is just depressing to our instincts that we don't spend every day narrowly avoiding death anymore. So we join cults, get outraged by the insignificant and rant about 'end times' as if any of us had ever lived through a plague, famine or societal collapse. Publishing and consuming depressing fiction media is either our inability to maintain perspective or aversion therapy. Just like in the '70s when we embraced Soylent Green because gasoline was no longer cheaper than water.


Please pardon my lending of perspective. Dystopian and apocalyptic media are the usual response to a little modern inconvenience - in my youngish life I've seen it pop up several times.

And you have a damned interesting perspective on Science Fiction as a whole . Keep posting .

 

[Parson]

@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.

I have not read these. I looked them up and they sound a bit too Fantasy for my tastes, but would have given one a go at your recommendation but when the ebook is MORE expensive than the regular book I have a hard time purchasing it out pure cantankerousness.

You need Hopepunk it’s emerging as a genre.

@Jo Zebedee .... I didn't know it was a thing. When I looked it up I found that all the titles I found (looked at about 20 of them) listed under Amazon's heading of Hope Punk were Romances with a little Fantasy thrown in. I picked a K.U. Fantasy entitled Flock (The Ravenhood Book 1) by Kate Stewart. We'll give it a go, by-and-by.

If this is the definition of dystopia, and my little research indicates it is, I'm willing to bet that this thread is not about dystopias. They appear to be actually rather narrow in their content and structure - and aren't post-calamity stories.

I'm probably to blame for this twist in the thread. I do mostly see "dystopia" as "post calamity" stories.

Perhaps SF has become dystopian because we're losing faith in the present. The optimism of Progress is fading and the realities of the techno-industrial system we have constructed are beginning to come home to us. Looking at civilisations in the past, their best time seems to have been when they were working towards something that they hadn't yet achieved and still had to struggle for. The tough days weren't yet past but things were on the up-and-up, and a bright future was just around the corner.

I tend to agree with this.

IMHO optimism is when we're looking for a better world and think we can get it; pessimism is when we realise we can't. My own philosophy is that we're looking in the wrong place, which makes optimism and pessimism essentially meaningless.

When we move out of the world of literature. I am confident because I know who holds tomorrow.

 

[Swank]

I'm probably to blame for this twist in the thread. I do mostly see "dystopia" as "post calamity" stories.

I think most of us do, and maybe the term has lost a bit of its specificity, or has taken on a broader secondary meaning? But I was right there with you.


Perhaps the reason we feel like we live in such a doldrum at present is because we have become so risk averse? People say we won't go to Mars because the astronauts might get cancer later - as if qualified people wouldn't line up around the block to go knowing that will happen. I feel like society has become a diner that can't decide between the steak or the lobster, so they order toast to avoid making the "wrong" choice. (Toast is the wrong choice.)

 

[Judderman]

What better/easier way to set up a hero to cheer on than having not only a bad guy but a whole, bad government or even bad society to overcome. Tricky to make good drama in Utopia.
Plus then we can believe we live in the best of times. Where tech has improved lives but arguably before our home land has become dystopian..

 

[Luiglin]

I have not read these. I looked them up and they sound a bit too Fantasy for my tastes, but would have given one a go at your recommendation but when the ebook is MORE expensive than the regular book I have a hard time purchasing it

The first series is an odd one that starts as scifi, goes into fantasy and finishes as an elcectric mash of both. The second series is pure scifi. There is a book (or two in some countries) in between that spans 20th century.

They are one of my fave series. My copies are falling apart from many rereads and I'm not sure that they are in print anymore. I do agree, the kindle price is plain daft. I have them in my Amazon wishlist if they ever go on offer (I collected the kindle versions of Thomas Covenant that way). However, I've also seen them in second hand bookshops.

 

[Judderman]

Although more for film and tv than books Star Trek has a near Utopian society. However the people in charge then send out spaceships of people to find other societies that are either flawed, dystopian, lower tech or opposed…

 

[psikeyhackr]

And you have a damned interesting perspective on Science Fiction as a whole . Keep posting .

Our problem is human social psychology not changing nearly as fast as technology. The psychology of scarcity is baked into the culture while we have the ability to make a culture closer to Star Trek than we know.

I really did not think of Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez as dystopian but some people do:

https://www.reddit.com/r/audible/comments/b9qlrc

An "evil" genius forces humans to evolve into what they could be. It would be difficult to discuss this since the administration slaps us down for political discourse.

 

[Swank]

Our problem is human social psychology not changing nearly as fast as technology. The psychology of scarcity is baked into the culture while we have the ability to make a culture closer to Star Trek than we know.

I don't know if human social psychology changes at all. Star Trek is fictional (and thin) - we have no model for how alternatives to scarcity would work.

We could certainly institute all sorts of more efficient systems than we currently do - which is why various forms of fascism go in and out of fashion as the populace considers what it would take to institute widespread change. The idea that a 'genius programmer' could save us all (from ourselves) is little different than the belief that a 'strong man' could do it. Both involve an act of extreme faith and throwing all caution to the wind.

Dystopic fiction (and history) largely serves to inoculate the populace against such schemes by illustrating the slippery slope.


The alternative course is that the capitalist system will unwittingly replace itself when short-term profit seeking shareholder behavior creates products that free consumers from consumerism. This perspective is wildly optimistic, yet much more likely than the creation of an economic savior. The music industry didn't end with file sharing, so maybe it isn't as wild a scenario as it may seem.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

We become outraged by the loss of our "rights" when asked to take reasonable steps for public health while not batting an eye at mass incarceration or genocide.

Indeed. Most laws, most regulations, were drafted to protect the weak from the strong, to protect the commonwealth from narrow individual interests. Now the term 'freedom' has been hijacked by those who want to turn back the clock by dismantling everything that has been achieved, and by attacking the ability of a society to act with a common purpose to address the big problems of the day for the benefit of the many over the few. The novel I am currently working on imagines a world in which this battle for (so called) 'freedom' has been won. Yes, it is dystopian. But I don't think that "dystopian and apocalyptic media are the usual response to a little modern inconvenience." These stories are intended to be warnings. The question 'what if?' is being asked rather than a prediction being made.