Dark days: The fascinating history of the dystopian novel
Dystopia, or the inverse of Utopia, is often thought of as a relatively modern literary genre. In fact it has a long history. These significant volumes made us think about the societies we live in.
Dystopia has been a recurrent theme of popular and literary fiction since the eighteenth century. It evolved as a response to fictional utopian concerns and the ominous politics of the writer’s time. The dystopian novel uses its make-believe guise to critique the ideologies under which they were forged.
Revolutionary writing
When exploring political and social shortcomings, these books are not shy about their revolutionary aims. Visions of totalitarian regimes and post-apocalyptic disaster scenarios litter the history of the genre. It has strong links to travel writing, satire and science fiction. They are not all the same.
Beginning with a journey
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is a satire by Jonathan Swift. It has been Disney-fied in the popular imagination into a Lilliputian jape. The novel is darker. It presents a harsh critique of contemporary society. In Laputa, Gulliver meets a race who took science and rationality too seriously. Their pointless experiments exhaust natural resources. His encounter with the Yahoos is more brutal. They are a primitive and savage people set in contrast with the wise Houyhnhnms, a race of horses.
No better than a Yahoo
The dystopian element appears when Gulliver realises he is no better than a Yahoo. When he returns to London, he is unable to reconcile himself to a society of uncivilised Yahoos. The end is bleak. Dystopian literature flings the sins of the present into the faces of its readers.
The dawn of thinking machines
Samuel Butler’s Erewhon was first published anonymously in 1872. The title is an anagram of nowhere. The country is based in part upon New Zealand. Butler used it as a satire upon Victorian society. Erewhon is a Utopia gone sour.
The book suggests that machines could evolve into consciousness. This was Darwin’s time. The critical reception hinged upon the idea of technology turned dangerous. This has recurred as a feature of dystopian literature ever since.
A life of crime
In Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925), the hero Josef K is arrested for no apparent reason. He is summoned to court for a crime that is not specified. He is caught in a hopeless tangle of legalities.
Kafka is the original Terry Gilliam. Anyone questioning the dystopian credentials of The Trial has never dealt with a government official. Harold Pinter and Orson Welles both worked on adaptations of the text. Those who have delved into legal proceedings will likely feel they have starred in it.
Doublethink and soma
Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s 1984 (1949) followed. Concepts like the Thought Police, Big Brother, Alphas, Doublethink and soma have been incorporated into popular imagination. It is easy to forget the visions of rotten society from which they derive.
In Huxley’s book, people are artificially bred and placed in predetermined roles. Nobody is dissatisfied until outsiders collide with the system. In Orwell’s book, Winston falls in love and questions the truth behind his propagandist society. The society takes horrific revenge for his treachery. Both books take recognisable traits from the real world and distort them to awful effect.
Since you mentioned Atwood, How about Oryx and Crake? how about Ender’s Game for that matter!?
Ender’s Game wasnt a dystopia. They never even once mentioned that it was ‘perfect’ or trying to be perfect for that matter. Ender’s Game was a state of total war similar to many nations in WWII.
Every character in that series had an innate understanding that the world was both far, far from perfect and that the powers which be were keeping some or all of the truth from the people.
Excellent book? Yes. Dystopia? I think not.
The characters in a dystopian novel do not have to believe that their world is perfect. Although that is a common characteristic of dystopian fiction, it does not determine whether or not a book fits into the dystopian genre.
“nobody is dissatisfied with his or her lot – until outsiders collide with the system and violence ensues”
Oh really? Then I guess I didn’t read the same book as you.
You forgot the fabulous We by E. Zamayatin, available here: http://mises.org/books/we_zamiatin.pdf
Notably missing was Zamyatin’s “We” in 1921! Definitely influential and essential to the writing of “1984” and “Brave New World.”
What about Fahrenheit 411?
Sorry to see this list missing two of the other seminal works of dystopian writing to come from the 20th century: Zamyatin’s We (a scarily prescient vision of rigorously organized society from early Bolshevik Russia) and Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, a cautionary tale of thought control and the dissolution of the self within a political prison.
There are many Soviet era science fiction dystopian novels that were not included. For example, “We” (1920) by Yevgeny Zamyatin wasn’t included, which inspired Orwell’s 1984, and Huxley’s Brave New World.
Don’t forget “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
It’s worthy to note that Brave New World and 1984 both seem to borrow heavily from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, all of which heavily focused on how the extremes of science and efficiency can impact society, and how the powers in control can mold language and class to oppress.
i am from 7 years in the future everything you thought was gonna happen or not happen is a lie the world starts to end at 2020