Is All Dystopian Fiction Necessarily Sci-Fi?

Swank said:
If you think Orwell is speculating about the possibility of rapid advancement in animal intelligence. If not, it's a fable.
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But outside of the animal characters, isn't the base of the store dystopian in nature?
And there is also 'Lord of the Flies'
 
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THX1138 said:
But outside of the animal characters, isn't the base of the store dystopian in nature?
And there is also 'Lord of the Flies'
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It would be, if the farm had millions of occupants. But, like Lord of the Flies, it is a small group, not a society. Both are commentary on society but don't depict one themselves.
 
Swank said:
It would be, if the farm had millions of occupants. But, like Lord of the Flies, it is a small group, not a society. Both are commentary on society but don't depict one themselves.
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I see. They are a study of a dystopian theory, but don't depict a functioning dystopian culture in themselves. Correct?
 
THX1138 said:
I see. They are a study of a dystopian theory, but don't depict a functioning dystopian culture in themselves. Correct?
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They might be a study in dystopian theory, or they might be a picture of what happens to human nature when certain normal things are absent, which is more what Lord of the Flies is about.
 
hitmouse said:
The boundary with some more mainstream fiction is inevitably a bit blurry. For example, is The Cement Garden by Ian McKewan, a novel about a bunch of kids going feral in a sink estate, a dystopian novel?
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I think The Lord of the Flies is probably a dystopia, although it's largely set on a deserted island (technically, it seems to be set during a future war, but that's the extent to which it's science fiction). I'm not sure about High Rise: probably not, I reckon. I suppose a novel set in its own closed "world" - say an isolated island, or some kind of closed-off social experiment - might arguably be dystopian even if it was set in the real world, but I think that's debatable.

THX1138 said:
From my understanding, Animal Farm is dystopian. Wouldn't fall under the speculative category?
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It's "speculative" in the sense that SFF used to be occasionally referred to as "speculative fiction", but of course only if you're thinking "What if this was possible?" rather than "What is likely to happen?" But the definition seems to get quite technical at this point, and different people will see it in different ways.
 
I think the "perspective" is important here. What is dystopia for some is not so for some others. For instance, I'm an anarchist and I think a decent and sustainable anarchy is possible; whilst some people cannot even imagine it, so it's gotta be a dystopian order (or the lack thereof) for them.

I never studied the etymology of the term "sci-fi", yet my gut feeling tells me that any dystopian work shouldn't necessarily be science fictional.
 
If a dystopian story speculates on radical changes in society or individuals and science is partly responsible--either from the development of it and then abandonment of it, doesn't that make it fit into a science fiction category?
Lord Humungus in The Road Warrior--he would probably not exist if not for the importance of gasoline, Mr. Microphone, and sports technology (hockey masks).
 
Archisorcerus said:
I think the "perspective" is important here. What is dystopia for some is not so for some others. For instance, I'm an anarchist and I think a decent and sustainable anarchy is possible; whilst some people cannot even imagine it, so it's gotta be a dystopian order (or the lack thereof) for them.

I never studied the etymology of the term "sci-fi", yet my gut feeling tells me that any dystopian work shouldn't necessarily be science fictional.
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I think this is author perspective, not the reader. Otherwise a LGBTQ romance would be classified as horror if a right winger was reading it. The author sets the stage and then describes something positive or negative for the characters.
 
Swank said:
I think this is author perspective, not the reader. Otherwise a LGBTQ romance would be classified as horror if a right winger was reading it. The author sets the stage and then describes something positive or negative for the characters.
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Hmm... This is debatable. Sometimes the intention of the writer is proven obsolete or worthless. There are many "horror" films that have me laughing in the aisles. There's also the "intentional fallacy" literary thing.
 
Archisorcerus said:
Hmm... This is debatable. Sometimes the intention of the writer is proven obsolete or worthless. There are many "horror" films that have me laughing in the aisles. There's also the "intentional fallacy" literary thing.
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Sure, there is that sort of thing. But if a writer tries to illustrate a dystopia by showing depressed and tortured people, how is that going to be reinterpreted as a utopia by anyone other than a sadist?

There are SF works that are arguably dystopias or not - like Neuromancer or Counting Heads - because they present an unvarnished future which is uncomfortably different from our world. But in those cases the author is not really presenting their characters as victims.

Your other point has to do with competence, and the fact that some seriously intended books or films are so poorly made that they only function as comedy doesn't mean we are "reinterpreting" them.
 
Swank said:
Sure, there is that sort of thing. But if a writer tries to illustrate a dystopia by showing depressed and tortured people, how is that going to be reinterpreted as a utopia by anyone other than a sadist?

There are SF works that are arguably dystopias or not - like Neuromancer or Counting Heads - because they present an unvarnished future which is uncomfortably different from our world. But in those cases the author is not really presenting their characters as victims.

Your other point has to do with competence, and the fact that some seriously intended books or films are so poorly made that they only function as comedy doesn't mean we are "reinterpreting" them.
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Good points but I don't fully agree. Especially your "competence" notion is arguable. I watched The Skull (1965 - UK) some weeks ago and I only laughed in its second part. But lots of IMDb users deem it as really creepy. So this is a relative issue.

Another example is Brave New World. Some see it as dystopia and some wish that world were just like the one portrayed there.

Anyway, thank you.
 
^ A friend of mine, for instance. It would be improper for me to mention his name here. Come on, that is not THAT surprising. I support lots of villains in books/movies. Lol.
 
Much of its science fiction .



The World Inside by Robert Silverberg A great book which is both Utopian and Dystopian and most definitely science fiction because, it is set in the 24th century.
 
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