GENRES/TRENDS

 UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE

The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia. 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 and other speculative fiction genres, and arguably are by definition a type of speculative fiction.

 In many dystopian novels, the created world seems, at first, perfect, but flaws soon appear which foreshadow a truly horrific society. Writers focus on values, attitudes or behaviors seen in present day society and then imagine where they might take us in the future.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins depicts a world where most live in poverty and serve the wealthy few by sending them their children to engage in a brutal version of reality television. With the world looking on, these young people must fight to the death so that one champion might achieve glory. Present day values around issues of privacy, violence, power and wealth inequity are satirized in this suspenseful series.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is a challenging adult read that begins her Mad Adam trilogy. The novel depicts both a world gone mad with scientific experiementation, corporate control, mass consumption, and hedonistic desires and a world destroyed. All of the science in the novel, as absurd and outlandish as it may seem, is actually being developed in our world. It is a shocking and thought-provoking expose of many pervasive attitudes that we may not like but we take for granted in our world.

Middle school readers intrigued by dystopian fiction should read Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. After a year of devastating earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes around the world, the subject of this novel may be too close for comfort. Here is a synopsis.

Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.       
Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

This is the first novel in a trilogy that explores our humanity and its resilience in the face of overwhelming disaster.

Here is a list of other excellent dystopian novels: 

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (adult)
• 1984 by George Orwell (adult) 
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (adult) 
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (adult)
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (adult)
  
• Matched by Ally Condie (young adult)
• Delirium by Lauren Oliver (young adult)
• Divergent by Veronica Roth (young adult)
• Wither by Lauren DeStefano (young adult)
  
• The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (young adult)
• Enclave by Ann Aguirre (young adult)
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (young adult)
• City of Embers by Jeanne DuPrau (young adult)
• The Giver by Lois Lowry ( intermediate)
• The Line by Teri Hall (young adult)
• The Declaration by Gemma Malley (young adult)
• Birthmarked by Caraugh M. O'Brien (young adult)
• The Stand by Stephen King (adult)
• Blindness by Jose Saramago (adult)
• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (young adult)
• The Children of Men by P. D. James (adult)
• The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer (young adult)
• Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix (young adult) 
• Unwind by Neal Shusterman (young adult) 

Recently, there has been a trend in young adult literature that I will call Dystopian Prison Fiction. In these novels, the protagonists are trapped in a prison-like structure and must fight for their survival and freedom.

Alexander Gordon Smith's Escape from Furnace series, beginning with Lockdown, was enormously popular last year. The central character finds himself locked in an underground prison for a crime he did not commit.  Few survive the brutal conditions and flesh-eating guards, so he must find his way out in order to survive. Not all of the books have been published in North America, and those that have are continually sold out in bookstores. Our library happens to have all five books in the series!

Incarceron, by Catherine Fisher, features a prison that itself is a living organism, constantly adapting to ensure the captivity  and misery of its prisoners.

One of the most popular books in this genre is The Maze Runner by James Dashner. 

Under the Dome by Stephen King puts human behavior under a microscope when an impenetrable transparent dome mysteriously cuts off a small town from the rest of the world. It's terrifying!

Full of explosive action, Inside-Outside by Maria V. Snyder, features a female protagonist.

A compulsive page-turner, The Compound by S. A. Bodeen, was inhaled by students last year. They all rushed back to the library for similar books.

Some of you may be wondering, "Where's the list of books about perfect worlds (utopias)?" Well, I can't think of many. The problem is that utopias are, well, perfect and stories need dramatic tension in order to develop plot which usually entails conflict. Can you have conflict in a perfect world?  Perhaps the notion of perfection is too subjective: people's interpretations are too varied. However, creating a utopia can be done. The Star Trek series portrayed a planet Earth where most problems had been solved leaving people to lead healthy, purposeful, harmonious lives. The conflict came from outside sources.

Here are some literary utopias written for adults that you might try.

Island by Aldous Huxley
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marg Piercy
Utopia by Thomas More
The Republic by Plato
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Lost Horizon by James Hilton