Utopia and Dystopia

Utopias and dystopias have been a staple of speculative fiction for a long time. They both are based very much of current society and explore what might happen in the future if society continues on its current path. This can lead both to a utopia as in the original series of “Star Trek” or to a dystopia as in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”.

 

To start the post off, let me define both ‘Utopia’ and ‘Dystopia,’ so we’re all on the same page here and know what we’re talking about. Both words refer to an image of a future society, the utopia being a positive vision of the future and the dystopia being a negative vision of it. The novel “Utopia” by Thomas More, of course, gave the name to the positive view of the future. ‘Dystopia’ was coined as its opposite later.

It is important to remember that both utopias and dystopias are focused on the society they’re set in, not on technology or something else. The society is not a backdrop, it takes an important place in the plot. In many utopias and dystopias, the society is the plot - or at least a part of the society, such as the government or the corporations, is.

This, together with our general social development in the last couple of decades, might explain why dystopias are more interesting to authors. It’s hard to get a conflict out of a positive future where everyone is happy and scarcity is a thing of the past, where people do not have to struggle and can just pass their days as they like. In a dystopia where the government makes teenagers fight in an arena or fertile women are forced to serve the upper echelons to birth their children, because most women can’t give birth any longer, it’s much easier to find a conflict. Therefore, this blog post is also focused more on the dystopia than on the utopia.

 

Dystopias focus on problems of our current society and blow them up all the way to eleven. If people mistrust the government (as they have for a long time now), the government will turn out to be as corrupt and tyrannical as they come. If people mistrust corporations (as well they should), corporations will turn out to exploit everyone and everything for money without the slightest hesitation. If people mistrust the system of education (which may also be a good idea sometimes), then the school system will turn out to be corrupt, making sure the corporations and the government get the kind of obeisant slave they want, once the children are grown.

Dystopian futures have a problem baked into the very clay they’re made out of. It might not always be visible at first glance - not all dystopias start out with obvious stuff like making people from every district fight to the death in the arena for the entertainment of the masses or zombies swarming across the wasteland that was once NYC. Yet, it’s always there. Sometimes, a dystopia masks as a utopia - but then the life is too good, there has to be something wrong with it.

Quite often, the dystopia seems alright at first, at least to a person who has grown up in it and doesn’t know about anything else. Life might not be wonderful, but it’s manageable. Humans are adaptable and so a person who has never seen anything else will simply adapt to their reality. Then something happens which makes them wonder. Perhaps the hard laws hit someone they love. Perhaps they are suddenly forced to take part in something everyone fears. Perhaps they are refused something they’ve always wanted for reasons they don’t understand. They start to ask questions and they start to doubt the answers those ‘above’ are prepared to give. Sooner or later, the dirty secret is discovered. Soylent Green is made of people. The Planet of the Apes is earth.

Alternately, people know they live in a bad time. There’s a war going on. There’s scarcity. There’s zombies walking around everywhere. There’s dragons overhead. Times are bad, but what can you do? That is, until someone thinks they know what to do and they take the dangerous journey and they might win or lose in the end - because in a dystopia, a ‘happily ever after’ is not guaranteed.

 

The way we view a dystopia can change over time. “1984” rings differently to us in a time after the date of the novel and full of technological devices which are far more efficient at keeping track of us than Big Brother ever was. In terms of privacy, Big Brother may be a step up by now. “The Handmaid’s Tale” generates a more vicious impact in a society where it seems more possible even than at the time of the writing of the story that a woman may lose control over her reproductive organs - just look at Texas. Sometimes, even a utopia of the past might sound like a dystopia in the present, depending on the changes society has made.

 

Dystopias, as mentioned above, do not have a guaranty for a good ending. The ending might be ambiguous, leaving us hanging after the confrontation is done. Is everything going well? Are things getting better? The ending might be good, there’s no rule preventing that. The evil government has fallen and everyone is free now. The ending might also be bad, though.

Dystopias are one of the few types of stories where a bad ending is accepted. Remember, it is a full society which is bad, not just one person or a few people who might be overcome by the hero and their friends. One person fighting back against a system is nothing. The system can and will win. Two people, ten people, fifty people - in a modern society with millions of people, that is not a problem, either.

Only if there is one thing or person that can be attacked to change everything, one supreme leader, one master of the ceremonies, one person who holds all the threads in their hands, another person can put an end to things. In other cases, if that person can’t spark a massive revolution, nothing will change and they will most likely die or be removed in another way. As history has taught us, even revolutions don’t guarantee a better future.

 

Utopias and dystopias are very interesting ‘what if’ experiments with society. It is easier to write a dystopia, because you’ll find more ways to create a conflict in it, but for lighter stories, a utopia might also be an interesting setting. There are many different aspects of society which you might boost, depending on what kind of story you want to tell. Have fun with utopias and dystopias and remember - a ‘happily ever after’ is not guaranteed if you’re in a dystopia.