Exploring Genre: Understanding Dystopia with Jeanette O’Hagan

In this month’s cross-post with Christian Writers Downunder, Jeanette O’Hagan explores the history of dystopian fiction, and current trends.

What is Dystopia?

An imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.

– Oxford Dictionaries

Dystopia is the opposite of utopia, a word invented by Sir Thomas Moore in 1516 to define a perfect harmonious society.

In Victorian times, writers looked to education and science to solve society’s problems. Science fiction promised a bright future that would eliminate war, hunger, pain, disease. Optimism turned to pessimism, which was reflected in speculative fiction such as the science fiction of H G Wells.

Modern dystopia developed in the twentieth century, a reaction to the failure of the supposed utopian societies and political systems (e.g. communism in Russia and China).

Utopian and dystopian fiction reveal the author’s ideas of what is good and bad in society. And one person’s utopia is often another’s dystopia.

The Classics

Classic dystopian novels include:

• Time Machine by H G Wells (1895)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
• 1984 by George Orwell (published (1949)
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

Early dystopian novels were often secular prophecies or projections of a possible grim future if certain trends of the time continued unabated. And while each is dated to some extent, they can still be scarily relevant to our time so many decades later—from Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984 or Bradbury’s wall TVs, or consumerism and senseless shallow lives living for the latest thrill in Fahrenheit 451.

The suggested root causes of the dystopia vary. They can be anything from a devastating war or natural disaster, from capitalistic consumerism to a conformist communism, to twisted theological autocratic regimes, to misogyny or climatic catastrophe (or some mixture of these).

The stories are meant as a warning and to provoke change, but often have a pessimistic tone. Thus 1984 ends with complete capitulation ‘He loved Big Brother’ though others are more optimistic with seeds of change (the ‘living books’ of Fahrenheit 451).

Young Adult Dystopian books

Dystopia has become a popular YA trope. For example:

• Lois Lowry’s The Giver series (1993)
• Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve (2001)
• City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (2003)
• Scott Westerfield’s Uglies (2005) series
• Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy (2008)
• Maze Runner series by James Dashner (2009)
• Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy (2011)

Common elements include a society which may at the start seem utopian (e.g. Brave New World, The Giver, Uglies, Divergent) or the inequities and conflicts may be more obvious (The Hunger Games). However, the apparent peace and prosperity is usually achieved by some evil or sacrifice and/or by a totalitarian control over the citizens.

Veronica Roth is a Christian. In the Divergent trilogy, the Abnegation faction arguably espouses many Christian virtues (though the virtues of the other factions such as honesty, knowledge, amity, and courage are also valued by Christians). Yet, even these can be twisted and used in the wrong way.

Christian Dystopia

Is there such a thing as Christian dystopia?

Some may think not. Yet the Bible has strong apocalyptic themes—in Daniel, the Book of Revelation, but also in the teachings of Jesus, Paul, John, and Peter. And the prophetic nature of dystopia (e.g. warnings of coming disaster if individuals and societies don’t change their ways) is also a strong strand in both the Old and New Testaments (e.g. Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Jesus’s warnings).

Dystopia provides a great platform for examining the benefits and failings of societies and the balance between the individual and the state, security and freedom, and the place of science, spirituality and religion. It reminds us no society or social or political system is perfect, even our own.

Christian dystopia generally takes a more hopeful approach. It should look to God and a renewed heaven and earth as the ultimate goal, rather than to a perfect societal system.

There are few examples of Christian dystopia. Some consider That Hideous Strength by C.S.Lewis to be dystopia (although I don’t). Kerry Nietz’s A Star Curiously Singing is a more recent example of a future dystopian world from a Christian perspective.

Dystpoia is more common in Christian Young Adult fiction. For instance:

• Nadine Brandes’s Out of Time series which starts with A Time to Die
• Anomaly trilogy by Krista McGee
• Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee’s The Book of Mortals series (starts with Forbidden)

My own Under the Mountain epic fantasy series has dystopian themes, with an enclosed dystopian society in the deep caverns beneath the mountain, where solutions are not simple but there is always a glimmer of hope.

So have you read dystopia? What do you like or dislike about it? Which authors would you recommend?