Utopian and dystopian fiction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, where utopian ideals have been subverted. Many novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction writing.
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[edit] Utopian fiction
The word utopia was first used in this context by Thomas More in his Latin work Utopia, which literally means both "no place" and "best place" in Greek. In this work, More sets out a vision of an ideal society. An earlier example of a Utopian-like work from classical times is Plato's The Republic (Plato), in which he outlines what he sees as the ideal society and its political system.
Other examples include Aldous Huxley's Island Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and B.F. Skinner's Walden Two. Gulliver's Travels may also be seen as a satirical utopia because it is actually a comment on the society the author lived in. The same goes for Erewhon by Samuel Butler - where "Erehwon" is "nowhere" spelled in reverse.
[edit] Dystopian fiction
Dystopias usually include elements of contemporary society and function as a warning against some modern trend. Often, the warning is against the threat of oppressive regimes in one form or another.
For examples of dystopias, see:
- Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things
- Stephen King's The Running Man
- Fritz Lang's film Metropolis
- Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner
- John Carpenter's Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.
- James De Mille's early A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
- Yevgeny Zamyatin's We
- George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm
- Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
- Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
- Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and Player Piano
- Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
- Ira Levin's This Perfect Day
- Ayn Rand's Anthem
- William Gibson's cyberpunk novels.
- Alfonso Cuarón's film Children of Men
- William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson's book Logan's Run
Also, for extended listings, see:
[edit] Combinations
Many works combine elements of both utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer from our world will journey to another place or time and see one society the author considers ideal, and another representing the worst possible outcome. The point is usually that the choices we make now may lead to a better or worse potential future world. Ursula K. Leguin's Always Coming Home fulfils this model, as does Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. In Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing there is no time-travelling observer, but her ideal society is invaded by a neighbouring power embodying evil repression. In Aldous Huxley's Island, in many ways a counterpoint to his better-known Brave New World, the fusion of the best parts of Buddhist philosophy and Western technology is threatened by the "invasion" of oil companies.
In another literary model, the imagined society journeys between elements of utopia and dystopia over the course of the novel or film. At the beginning of The Giver by Lois Lowry, the world is described as a utopia, but as the book progresses, dystopia takes over.
[edit] Subgenres
A subgenre of this is ecotopian fiction, where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction. Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia was the first example of this, followed by Kim Stanley Robinson in his California trilogy. Robinson has also edited an anthology of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias. Michael Crichton has produced a notable work called State of Fear, where he painstakingly footnotes the scientific assertions made by characters on both sides, then provides helpful appendices.
Another important subgenre is feminist utopias, for example Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time. See also the overlapping category of feminist science fiction. Writer Sally Gearhart calls feminist utopian fiction political, saying it: contrasts the present world with an idealized society, criticizes contemporary values and conditions, sees men or masculine systems as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as equal to or superior to men, having ownership over their reproductive functions. A common solution to gender oppression or social ills in feminist utopian fiction is to remove men, either showing isolated female societies as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, or societies where men have died out or been replaced, as in Joanna Russ's A Few Things I Know About Whileaway, where "the poisonous binary gender" has died off. Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is an example of a feminist utopian novel that does not remove men, but posits a non-human biology in which each individual is usually neuter, and sometimes male, sometimes female.
[edit] Cultural impact
Étienne Cabet's work Voyages en Icarie caused a group of Cabet's followers, known as Icarians, to leave France in 1848 and come to the United States to found a series of utopian settlements in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, California, and elsewhere. These groups lived in communal settings and lasted until 1898.
