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Sunday, October 02, 2022

Dystopia + government = same old thing


I often enjoy dystopian fiction. Books like the Hunger Games series, television series, and movies.

However, almost all of it introduces some factor that I don't like, which interferes with the whole premise-- usually because it doesn't seem like it really fits the story. Something that tries to make it into something other than what it was.

After establishing how you'll adapt to survive this world, suddenly, "Oh, look: there's a whole society you never knew about living just over the hill...or under it. This changes everything." And usually not in a good way. It's like the common fiction arc: "Let's discover this wondrous new place or thing, and destroy it so the world can return to how it was before."

And, of course, most dystopian fiction has to become a sermon promoting the Religion of Statism in some way. "See how brutal and short your life would be without us robbing and controlling you for your own good?" They do this, for example, with aggressive neo-governmental gangs calling themselves a militia and pretending they are different from any other political government. They aren't. And it kind of ruins the storytelling in a lazy way.
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5 comments:

  1. Does that include the classic dystopian books as well as the modern ones?

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    1. I'm not sure I've read any classic ones. Name a few.

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  2. One of the first is "Under the Heel" by Jack London. "1984" is the best known classic. There's another called "The Wanting Seed," which I've heard of but never read.

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    1. I've read "1984", of course, but hadn't heard of the other two. I'll definitely give them a look. Thanks!
      (And, sorry about comment moderation-- any comment on a post over 2 weeks old gets moderated because those are the ones that attract the most spam-- or did before the blog address mess several months ago. I'll bet I could turn that off now,)

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  3. "Under the Heel" by Jack London is one of the first. "1984" by George Orwell is the best-known.

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