SUB-GENRES OF DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE
Dystopian literature has become incredibly popular ever since Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” published in 1932. Although this is not the first dystopian novel written it is the first novel to bring this genre to the mainstream. Dystopian literature appeared at a time in human history that was perfectly suited for it, because at the same time Aldous Huxley published “Brave New World” the North American and European countries were going through a revolution of sorts. There were new ideas and inventions and tools starting to form that would lead to a better world. But there was always this thought lingering in the mist of our minds that said “What if these ideas, inventions and tools, What if this industrialization isn't what we thought it was. What if with all of this leads to a world that is less ideal maybe even disastrous for humans to live in?” Now because of this and because of the popularity of “Brave New World” there was an influx of new authors wanting to write dystopian literature. And there was a ton of new ideas that they could write about because of how much the world was changing at the time. Now these new authors that came into dystopian literature brought with them a whole bunch of brand new ideas. And those new ideas became sub-genres of dystopian literature, below are all the sub-genres that dystopian literature helped to create.
Combinations: Many works combine elements of both utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer 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. Le Guin'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, the world's dystopian aspects are revealed.
Ecotopian fiction: Where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction. Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia is an important 20th century example of this genre, as is the Three Californias Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson has also edited an anthology of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias. The novel The Bridge (1973) by D. Keith Mano presents a world dominated by a global environmental fascism, where the government ultimately promotes the extinction of the human race by enforced mass suicide, so as to 'save' the environment. Other examples include the Uplift Series by David Brin where ecotopian value systems and their implications are explored in a fictional galactic society.
Feminist Utopias: Writer Sally Miller Gearhart calls this sort of fiction political: 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 all-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. Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time keeps human biology, but removes pregnancy and childbirth from the gender equation by resorting to artificial wombs, while allowing both women and men the nurturing experience of breastfeeding.Utopias have explored the ramification of gender being either a societal construct or a hard-wired imperative. In Mary Gentle's Golden Witchbreed, gender is not chosen until maturity, and gender has no bearing on social roles. In contrast, Doris Lessing's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980) suggests that men's and women's values are inherent to the sexes and cannot be changed, making a compromise between them essential. In My Own Utopia (1961) by Elizabeth Mann Borghese, gender exists but is dependent upon age rather than sex — genderless children mature into women, some of whom eventually become men. Utopic single-gender worlds or single-sex societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have been imagined to come about by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenetic reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by feminist writers. Many influential feminist utopias of this sort were written in the 1970s; the most often studied examples include Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included equality between sexes, rather than separation. Such worlds have been portrayed most often by lesbian or feminist authors; their use of female-only worlds allows the exploration of female independence and freedom from patriarchy. The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all — Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a famous early example of a sexless society. Charlene Ball writes in Women's Studies Encyclopedia that use of speculative fiction to explore gender roles has been more common in the United States than in Europe and elsewhere.
Feminist Dystopias: Feminist dystopians have become prevalent in Young Adult, or YA, literature in recent years, focusing on the relationship between gender identity and the teenager. The Birthmarked trilogy by Caragh O'Brien focuses on a teenage midwife in a future post-apocalyptic world. The second novel in the series places the teenage heroine Maia in a matriarchal society. Similarly Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver features a society where women are in control. The aim of the novels is to turn gender disparity into a talking point with young readers by presenting it in an unusual circumstance. Another YA novel that falls squarely into the feminist dystopia category is the science-fiction tale Crewel by Gennifer Albin in which girls known as Spinsters weave the fabric of reality. Despite being the most powerful women in the world, they are kept in check by a patriarchal government known as the Guild. The novel's heroine, introduced to gender equity by her parents, fights against her control and domination under the Guild's rule.
Society: In the Russian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which was first published in English in 1924, people are permitted to live out of public view twice a week for one hour. They are only referred to by numbers instead of names, but there are "ciphers" which are neither referred to by name nor by number. In the novel Brave New World, written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, a class system is prenatally designated in terms of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Among the lower castes, single embryos are "bokanovskified", so that they produce between eight and ninety-six identical siblings, making the citizens as uniform as possible.
Some dystopian works emphasize the pressure to conform in terms of a requirement not to excel. In these works, the society is ruthlessly egalitarian, in which ability and accomplishment, or even competence, are suppressed or stigmatized as forms of inequality, as in Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. Similarly, in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the dystopia represses the intellectuals with particular force. Dystopian governments do not usually care for the well-being or safety of their citizens. They focus on complete control and extortion of their people. This is all in order to maintain power.
Environment: Fictional dystopias are commonly urban and frequently isolate their characters from all contact with the natural world. Sometimes they require their characters to avoid nature, as when walks are regarded as dangerously anti-social in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. In Brave New World, the lower classes of society are conditioned to be afraid of nature, but also to visit the countryside and consume transportation and games to stabilize society. A few "green" fictional dystopias do exist, such as in Michael Carson's short story "The Punishment of Luxury", and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. The latter is set in the aftermath of nuclear war, "a post-nuclear holocaust Kent, where technology has reduced to the level of the Iron Age".
Politics: In When the Sleeper Wakes, H. G. Wells depicted the governing class as hedonistic and shallow. George Orwell contrasted Wells's world to that depicted in Jack London's The Iron Heel, where the dystopian rulers are brutal and dedicated to the point of fanaticism, which Orwell considered more plausible. Whereas the political principles at the root of fictional utopias (or "perfect worlds") are idealistic in principle, intending positive consequences for their inhabitants, the political principles on which fictional dystopias are based are flawed and result in negative consequences for the inhabitants of the dystopian world, which is portrayed as oppressive. Dystopias are often filled with pessimistic views of the ruling class or government that is brutal or uncaring ruling with an "iron hand" or "iron fist". These dystopian government establishments often have protagonists or groups that lead a "resistance" to enact change within their government. Dystopian political situations are depicted in novels such as Parable of the Sower, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451; and in such films as Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Brazil, The Hunger Games, FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions, and Soylent Green.
Combinations: Many works combine elements of both utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer 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. Le Guin'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, the world's dystopian aspects are revealed.
Ecotopian fiction: Where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction. Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia is an important 20th century example of this genre, as is the Three Californias Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson has also edited an anthology of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias. The novel The Bridge (1973) by D. Keith Mano presents a world dominated by a global environmental fascism, where the government ultimately promotes the extinction of the human race by enforced mass suicide, so as to 'save' the environment. Other examples include the Uplift Series by David Brin where ecotopian value systems and their implications are explored in a fictional galactic society.
Feminist Utopias: Writer Sally Miller Gearhart calls this sort of fiction political: 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 all-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. Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time keeps human biology, but removes pregnancy and childbirth from the gender equation by resorting to artificial wombs, while allowing both women and men the nurturing experience of breastfeeding.Utopias have explored the ramification of gender being either a societal construct or a hard-wired imperative. In Mary Gentle's Golden Witchbreed, gender is not chosen until maturity, and gender has no bearing on social roles. In contrast, Doris Lessing's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980) suggests that men's and women's values are inherent to the sexes and cannot be changed, making a compromise between them essential. In My Own Utopia (1961) by Elizabeth Mann Borghese, gender exists but is dependent upon age rather than sex — genderless children mature into women, some of whom eventually become men. Utopic single-gender worlds or single-sex societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have been imagined to come about by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenetic reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by feminist writers. Many influential feminist utopias of this sort were written in the 1970s; the most often studied examples include Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included equality between sexes, rather than separation. Such worlds have been portrayed most often by lesbian or feminist authors; their use of female-only worlds allows the exploration of female independence and freedom from patriarchy. The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all — Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a famous early example of a sexless society. Charlene Ball writes in Women's Studies Encyclopedia that use of speculative fiction to explore gender roles has been more common in the United States than in Europe and elsewhere.
Feminist Dystopias: Feminist dystopians have become prevalent in Young Adult, or YA, literature in recent years, focusing on the relationship between gender identity and the teenager. The Birthmarked trilogy by Caragh O'Brien focuses on a teenage midwife in a future post-apocalyptic world. The second novel in the series places the teenage heroine Maia in a matriarchal society. Similarly Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver features a society where women are in control. The aim of the novels is to turn gender disparity into a talking point with young readers by presenting it in an unusual circumstance. Another YA novel that falls squarely into the feminist dystopia category is the science-fiction tale Crewel by Gennifer Albin in which girls known as Spinsters weave the fabric of reality. Despite being the most powerful women in the world, they are kept in check by a patriarchal government known as the Guild. The novel's heroine, introduced to gender equity by her parents, fights against her control and domination under the Guild's rule.
Society: In the Russian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which was first published in English in 1924, people are permitted to live out of public view twice a week for one hour. They are only referred to by numbers instead of names, but there are "ciphers" which are neither referred to by name nor by number. In the novel Brave New World, written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, a class system is prenatally designated in terms of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Among the lower castes, single embryos are "bokanovskified", so that they produce between eight and ninety-six identical siblings, making the citizens as uniform as possible.
Some dystopian works emphasize the pressure to conform in terms of a requirement not to excel. In these works, the society is ruthlessly egalitarian, in which ability and accomplishment, or even competence, are suppressed or stigmatized as forms of inequality, as in Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. Similarly, in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the dystopia represses the intellectuals with particular force. Dystopian governments do not usually care for the well-being or safety of their citizens. They focus on complete control and extortion of their people. This is all in order to maintain power.
Environment: Fictional dystopias are commonly urban and frequently isolate their characters from all contact with the natural world. Sometimes they require their characters to avoid nature, as when walks are regarded as dangerously anti-social in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. In Brave New World, the lower classes of society are conditioned to be afraid of nature, but also to visit the countryside and consume transportation and games to stabilize society. A few "green" fictional dystopias do exist, such as in Michael Carson's short story "The Punishment of Luxury", and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. The latter is set in the aftermath of nuclear war, "a post-nuclear holocaust Kent, where technology has reduced to the level of the Iron Age".
Politics: In When the Sleeper Wakes, H. G. Wells depicted the governing class as hedonistic and shallow. George Orwell contrasted Wells's world to that depicted in Jack London's The Iron Heel, where the dystopian rulers are brutal and dedicated to the point of fanaticism, which Orwell considered more plausible. Whereas the political principles at the root of fictional utopias (or "perfect worlds") are idealistic in principle, intending positive consequences for their inhabitants, the political principles on which fictional dystopias are based are flawed and result in negative consequences for the inhabitants of the dystopian world, which is portrayed as oppressive. Dystopias are often filled with pessimistic views of the ruling class or government that is brutal or uncaring ruling with an "iron hand" or "iron fist". These dystopian government establishments often have protagonists or groups that lead a "resistance" to enact change within their government. Dystopian political situations are depicted in novels such as Parable of the Sower, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451; and in such films as Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Brazil, The Hunger Games, FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions, and Soylent Green.
Religion: Concepts and symbols of religion may come under attack in a dystopia. In Brave New World, for example, the establishment of the state included lopping off the tops of all crosses (symbol of Christianity) to make them "T"s, (symbol of Henry Ford's Model T)( to show a lack of all religion Huxley decided to change the calender system to A.F ( After Ford) instead of A.D (Anno Domini) Latin for " In the year of the lord" this is to show that his made up society worships technological innovators where they used to worship a deity ) . But compare Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, wherein a Christianity-based theocratic regime rules the future United States. In some of the fictional dystopias, such as Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, the family has been eradicated and continuing efforts are deployed to keep it from reestablishing itself as a social institution. In Brave New World, where children are reproduced artificially, the concepts "mother" and "father" are considered obscene. In some novels, the State is hostile to motherhood: for example, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, children are organized to spy on their parents; and in We, the escape of a pregnant woman from OneState is a revolt.
Overpopulation Dystopias: The population of the world has grown dramatically and the limited resources of our planet are exhausted. Mankind is living in dispair and society is in imminent danger of becoming or has already become social-darwinistic. There is an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and military and police are used to control the starving masses. There are many parallells between overpopulation dystopias and cyberpunk dystopias, especially when speaking of environment and urbanisation. This kind of dystopia is rather rare, which is surprising: it may become an imminent problem in the near future.
Examples: Make Room! Make Room! (novel; motion picture: Soylent Green, Stand on Zanzibar (novel).
Totalitarianism: As the name suggests, totalitarian societies utilizes total control over and demands total commitment from the citizens, usually hiding behind a political ideology. Totalitarian states are, in most cases, ruled by party bureaucracies backed up by cadres of secret police and armed forces. The citizens are often closely monitored and rebellion is always punished mercilessly. Stories taking place in totalitarian dystopias usually depict the hopeless struggle of isolated dissidents. Totalitarian dystopias have, in general, dark psychological depths and strong political qualities. Hitler's Third Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union were real examples of such societies. Examples: Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel; TV play; motion picture), We (novel), Fatherland (novel; TV movie).
Overpopulation Dystopias: The population of the world has grown dramatically and the limited resources of our planet are exhausted. Mankind is living in dispair and society is in imminent danger of becoming or has already become social-darwinistic. There is an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and military and police are used to control the starving masses. There are many parallells between overpopulation dystopias and cyberpunk dystopias, especially when speaking of environment and urbanisation. This kind of dystopia is rather rare, which is surprising: it may become an imminent problem in the near future.
Examples: Make Room! Make Room! (novel; motion picture: Soylent Green, Stand on Zanzibar (novel).
Totalitarianism: As the name suggests, totalitarian societies utilizes total control over and demands total commitment from the citizens, usually hiding behind a political ideology. Totalitarian states are, in most cases, ruled by party bureaucracies backed up by cadres of secret police and armed forces. The citizens are often closely monitored and rebellion is always punished mercilessly. Stories taking place in totalitarian dystopias usually depict the hopeless struggle of isolated dissidents. Totalitarian dystopias have, in general, dark psychological depths and strong political qualities. Hitler's Third Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union were real examples of such societies. Examples: Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel; TV play; motion picture), We (novel), Fatherland (novel; TV movie).