Contemporary Dystopia

"We admire dystopian novels because, by giving us worst-case scenarios of the future, maybe our current society can be jolted enough to avoid those scenarios eventually happening in real life. Like some of the characters in dystopian novels, we might feel a little against-all-odds hope. Then again, maybe not..."

- Dave Astor, Huffington Post

In the past few years, the popularity of dystopian fiction has spiked, which many people attribute to changes in political leadership. A new television series brought Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale back into the spotlight, and after Trump's election, sales of George Orwell's 1984 sky-rocketed. Recent works of dystopian literature reflect our current societal anxieties:

cataclysmic global warming
economic inequality
extreme political partisanship
suicide bombings and drone killings
widening ideological gap between red and blue America
fake news and alternative facts
walls, cages, and detention centers

domestic terrorism
police brutality and racism
loss of social connection
rampant consumerism and corporatization
technology taking over, internet insecurity
women's rights and the #metoo movement

Much of contemporary dystopian literature serves as critique of problems in society, which left unchecked could lead to our demise. We like to think that these stories are extreme visions set in the far future, but in reality they are much closer to home than we may feel comfortable admitting.

(some) Contemporary Dystopian Fiction

A North Korean weaponized microbe destroys people's memories and identities across the globe.

In the near future, humans can live for up to 300 years, but not everyone craves immortality.

A civil war has broken out in America over fossil fuel. The Middle East is a global superpower, and refugees turn into rebels.

America has a one-child policy, so a set of twins trade places to fake a single existence.

“I don’t think there’s much in this book that hasn’t happened; it just happened far away.”

- Omar El Akkad, on American War

The planet has been destroyed by war and climate change. From their complex in the sky, wealthy citizens and their celebrity dictator drain Earth's resources.

Large parts of the planet are uninhabitable due to rising seas. The poor live in favelas while the rich benefit from life-extending treatments.

Abortion and in-vitro fertilization are illegal, and embryos have more rights than the women who carry them.

Climate wars have devastated the earth. A floating Arctic city is threatened by corruption, crime, and natural catastrophe.

“I built a world that is only a small distance from our present tense, one in which our current aims have simply played out to their logical conclusions: endless war, environmental degradation, the exploitation of Earth as a resource, the brutal stratification of humanity.”

- Lidia Yuknavitch, on The Book of Joan

A nation receives a rush of refugees who are tattooed and confined to quadrants; citizens are taught to kill them with gas.

The Cloud retail company has taken over a country riddled with blazing temperatures, sexual harassment, and greedy CEOs.

The Resonants have to keep their powers secret to avoid being murdered or barricaded in camps by the militia.

A millenial struggling to survive after a plague sweeps the country is invited to join a group traveling to the Facility to re-start society.

"The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before, more than once."

- Margaret Atwood

How plausible are dystopian scenarios?

Many dystopian visions are terrifying because of their believability. Though they may seem far-removed from our own experiences, most of what happens in these stories has happened before somewhere, sometime in the world. Dystopian writers have a strong grasp of how their worlds could actually come to be based on global history and current events.

From The Handmaid's Tale:

"After the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time... Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The road-blocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful."

a distant future?

Margaret Atwood claims that everything in her MaddAddam Trilogy is based on things that have actually happened: warlords taking control, human rights abuses, persecution of minorities, and abuse of women.

everyone tugging the rope during hangings so no one is guilty = English history
focring women to have children, quotas for childbirth = Ceausescu in Romania (ruled 1965-1989)
reading against the law = American slavery
sumptuary laws, who can wear what, what needs to be covered, etc. = human culture forever

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."

- Albert Camus

Sources:

Atwood, M. (1986). The handmaids tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Alter, A. (2017, March 30). Boom Times for the New Dystopians. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/books/boom-times-for-the-new-dystopians.html

Astor, D. (2012, December 19). Why Do We Like Dystopian Novels? Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-do-we-like-dystopian-novels_b_1979301?guccounter=1

Burke, J., & Ornstein, R. E. (1997). The axemakers gift: technologys capture and control of our minds and culture. New York: Putnams.

Higgins, C. (2016, October 15). Interview with Margaret Atwood. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize

Leu, C. (2019, September 5). New Dystopian Novels That Thrill and Horrify. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/books/review/jesse-ball-rob-hart.html

Trombetta, S. (2018, November 6). 9 New Dystopian Novels That Might Distract You For a Bit from the Real-Life Nightmare. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/p/9-new-dystopian-novels-that-might-distract-you-for-a-bit-from-the-real-life-nightmare-13093301

WBUR. (2017, April 3). A Fictive, Failing Dystopian Future. On Point. Boston, NY. Retrieved from https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/04/03/dystopian-fiction-sales

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