Utopian and dystopian fiction

Utopian and dystopian fiction are literary genres that encourage readers and writers to consider the best (utopian) and worst (dystopian) outcomes of human communities and projects. These genres are considered speculative fiction and they imagine what might occur in the future. Within the collection of speculative fiction are many subgenres including fantasy, horror, apocalyptic fiction, alternative histories, and science fiction. Imagining what the future might bring is not a new concept, and examples of both utopian and dystopian fiction can be found throughout history.

Brief History

The first appearance of a utopia in literature was in Plato’s Republic, written in 380 BCE. Plato explores a fictionalized society as a way to examine ideas of just governance and justice amongst citizens. In the Republic, the government is ruled by philosopher-kings who have been chosen for their intellect and wisdom, and are specifically trained to be just rulers of their societies. Though we now recognize the society in the Republic as a utopia, the term would not exist for several centuries.

The first work of utopian fiction was Utopia, written by Sir Thomas More in 1516. In this book, More coined the word utopia by combining together Greek words for "no place" and "good place." This new word came to mean an imagined space, which is ideally good, but cannot yet exist in the modern world society. In Utopia, philosopher Raphael Hythloday describes his visit to the island of Utopia to a fictionalized version of More. The society of Utopia is described as an ideal community that does not require lawyers and where communal ownership has taken the place of private property. More’s work was rejected by many at the time when he wrote it, and accepted by others as a political statement against the government of England.

While utopian fiction was fairly popular up to the twentieth century, the genre was largely overshadowed by its dystopian counterpart beginning in the nineteenth century. Scholars generally hold that dystopian fiction evolved out of utopian fiction, especially as general literary tastes and social attitudes shifted. A wealth of subgenres arose depicting a great diversity of potential dystopias, from worlds devastated by natural disaster or genetically-engineered disease to those controlled by repressive political or religious regimes. The early twenty-first century saw a particular boom in the popularity of dystopian fiction, including in young adult literature.

While sometimes the division between utopian and dystopian is very clear, at other times it is less so; one group’s utopian existence may come at the expense of another group’s happiness. For example, Lois Lowry's classic work The Giver examines the construction of a utopian community that has made many sacrifices to achieve their utopia. In her books, she asks if those sacrifices are ethical or justified. For Lowry and her readers, The Giver is dystopian, but for some characters in the book, the society might be seen as a utopia.

Both utopian and dystopian fictions are considered to be important ways to imagine the future, and, through that imagining, to consider the condition of the present. By playing out the end result of current programs, wars, propaganda campaigns, or changes in education, works of speculative fiction are able to puzzle through a long line of consequences and benefits. Readers are often faced with question of whether the end really does justify the means.

Utopian Fiction

Some of the common features of utopian fiction are benevolent or peaceful governments, equality, and a clean environment. Some utopias imagine a world where money been abolished while others assert that class equality has been achieved, even though money is still in circulation. Like Plato's Republic and More's Utopia, many later examples of utopian literature imagine an ideal political structure. As such, some are thought to be political treatises, or statements about the role of politics and political officials in modern-day societies.

Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy details the story of Julian West, who is put into a deep sleep in an underground bunker in the nineteenth century and wakes up a hundred years later to find that the people late twentieth century have built an egalitarian society and solved all of the social ills of the nineteenth century. In the book, Bellamy was arguing for universal education and an economy based on public capital, solutions that were part of his own political view. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is another such novel, though this time the treatise was on feminism. Published in 1915, the book details an all-female society that reproduces by parthenogenesis (growing a new organism from an unfertilized egg). Ivan Yefremov’s Andromeda: A Space Age Tale, written in 1957, examines the way that a space-based society in the future could be held together by the principles of communism and create a utopia. Other works that have been classified as utopian literature or contain strong utopian elements include Ecotopia (1975) by Ernest Callenbach, The Dispossessed (1974) and Always Coming Home (1985) by Ursula K. LeGuin, Pacific Edge (1990) by Kim Stanley Robinson, Kirinyaga (1998) by Mike Resnick, and Blue Remembered Earth (2012) by Alastair Reynolds.

There are far fewer pieces of utopian fiction than dystopian fiction. There are a number of reasons for this. In a utopian society, people are happy and conditions are ideal. Such an environment does not incite conflict, and one of the central requirements for successful fiction is some kind of conflict. For some scholars, utopian fiction is too simplistic to sustain a large body of works.

Dystopian Fiction

Dystopian fiction depicts worlds where society’s ills have been magnified and often includes characteristics such as a controlling government, a large gap between poor and rich communities, the use of technology for mind control or censorship, or a destroyed environment. Dystopian works have long been popular as they allow both speculation about realistic or fantastical situations and commentary on actual real-life conditions or observations. The basic element of having a protagonist struggle against major societal or environmental challenges lends itself to strong dramatic tension and conflict. Authors such as H. G. Wells helped make works depicting dystopian societies fashionable in the late nineteenth century with works such as The Time Machine (1895) and When the Sleeper Awakes (1899).

A classic example of dystopian fiction is George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, which describes a dystopian future in which England has become a totalitarian state. Propaganda, class division, and education systems have all been employed to keep citizens from asking too many questions. Orwell wrote later that 1984 was informed by his time working as a government official with the British Colonial Service in Burma. Today, organizations such as the Soros Foundation have sponsored the translation of 1984 into many different languages. These books are distributed as part of an educational program to help people spot and prevent totalitarian and otherwise corrupt government programs.

Dystopian literature became increasingly common and popular with the general rise of science fiction from the 1950s onward. Writers experimented with form and style to greatly widen the range of works that can be considered dystopian, with notable examples appearing in everything from comic books to literary novels. Among the better-known works from highly regarded authors are Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury, Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding, Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand, A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess, Planet of the Apes (1963) by Pierre Boulle, The Lorax (1971) by Dr. Seuss, The Stand (1978) by Stephen King, The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood, Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace, and The Road (2005) by Cormac McCarthy.

The early twenty-first century saw an explosion in the popularity of dystopian fiction, a trend that some commentators connected to contemporary societal developments. One of the more notable aspects of this trend was the way in which dystopias became a staple of young adult literature in particular. A significant example of dystopian young adult fiction is the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. In this series, the United States has been destroyed and reorganized into a set of districts, rather than states. While residents in the Capital district enjoy a high standard of living, residents of other districts are forced to work in coal mines, farms, or metal shops. The books follow Katniss Everdeen as she participates in an annual event in which children fight to the death and explores the ways that she inspires political revolution. While the trilogy was often compared to earlier works, its huge popularity (and adaptation into equally popular blockbuster films) ensured that it was influential in its own right. Other dystopian works of the 2000s and 2010s, regardless of intended audience, include The Maze Runner (2009) and its sequels by John Dashner, Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline, Station Eleven (2011) by Emily St. John Mandel, and The Circle (2013) by Dave Eggers. Each of these novels also received film treatments, further indicating the widespread popularity of dystopian fiction.

Bibliography

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