(A reprint from my own blog) “Dystopia” is the polar opposite of utopia, a society where instead of perfection, everything has gone wrong. Or more precisely gone wrong in a specific way. As the Uroboros blog and my friend Ross have noted, lots of SF stories present futures that have gone wrong but a dystopia should be something more. As Urboros saysm 28 Days Later presents a horrible future but it isn’t dystopia. Planet of the Apes is a bad future, at least from the human point of view, but it’s not a dystopia.
Neither is DC’s Atomic Knights, even though it’s set in a future where all plant and animal life was wiped out by nuclear war (humanity had anti-radiation treatments), leaving the world on the brink of starvation.
Uroboros suggests dystopian settings should exclude chaotic, collapsing futures and be reserved for societies that have too much order — Brave New World or The Matrix, say. That’s a good, general definition though I don’t think it’s absolute. The Purge movies’ hook is that for 12 hours a year, people can do whatever they like to whomever they like with no legal penalty. That’s dystopian (though as noted at the link, some find it cool) but it’s not an excess of order.
Ross pointed out once that the early dystopias — Brave New World, 1984, We — followed a simple formula: individual challenges repressive, conformist dystopia, loses and gets crushed. Sticking to that definition would eliminate lots of marginal entries but would squeeze out a lot of legitimately dystopian futures.
Another element many dystopias share is a Warning! element, They’re not showing us an unpleasant fictional future but one that could well be our tomorrow, If …
- If we don’t fight communism (Strange Holiday)
- If we get too strict about population control (the dreadful ZPG and the surprisingly good The Last Child)
- If the religious right takes over (The Handmaid’s Tale)
- If our quest for equality goes too far (Harrison Bergeron).
- If the rich get too much power (M.I.C.R.A.)
Some of these dystopias seem timeless: the oppressive misogyny of the religious right makes The Handmaid’s Tale as timely as when it came out. Others don’t age so well. 1968’s Wild in the Streets is fun but fears of the Baby Boom youth taking over and shoving seniors into old-age camps look quite far-fetched now. The 2012 Atlas Shrugged movie follows the book (I gather) in showing government responding to economic crisis by turning into a socialist dystopia crushing the rich. That’s laughable in an era when politicians think restoring upper-level taxes to the level of the 1990s is controversial.
Ross also made the point that what the film or book or comic emphasizes is also important. Terminator‘s Skynet-ruled future might qualify as a dystopia but Terminator is an SF thriller, not a dystopia. H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine has an If This Goes On element — what if capital and labor devolve into two separate human subspecies — but that isn’t central to the plot the way What If is to The Last Child (heck, the Time Traveler admits he can’t even be sure that’s how this future came to be).
If any of y’all were planning to right some dystopian fiction this week, I hope this helps.
I think one of the things that distinguishes a distopia from some other forms of horrible, or even nightmarish, futures is that in a distopia the horrible elements are built-in aspects of the society, rather than outside influences. If there’s no society to speak of, it can’t be a distopia, and if the nightmarish things happening to society are the result of an ongoing global catastrophe or alien invasion, it’s only a distopia if the human response has involved building a nightmarish society in reaction, rather than if the nightmarish elements are directly caused by the disaster or invasion. It’s the way that the society is constructed AS a society that can make it a distopia.
Very good description, thank you.