Dystopian Stories
In this collection of cautionary tales, we offer stories where everything goes wrong: loss of freedom and identity, environmental catastrophies, and out-of-control technologies that jeopardize humanity's future. We offer Dystopia's origins, for students & teachers: Discussion Questions, and Useful Links.
Dystopia is from the late 18th century, from dys- ‘bad’ + utopia. Oxford English Dictionary definition: "An imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible." Utopia was introduced by Sir Thomas More in his novel, Utopia (1561), a Latin word meaning "no place" or "somewhere too good to be true." The New Yorker compares the two: "A utopia is a paradise, a dystopia a paradise lost" and "Dystopias follow utopias the way thunder follows lightning." Dystopian fiction is a sub-genre of Science Fiction, in which social structures decompose.
Historical Context
Real-life historical events such as war, revolution, the rise of repressive governments or new technologies inspired Dystopian authors to write about future worlds of oppression, terror, suffering, and loss of individual freedoms, or battles between man and machine. The emergence of Communism and police states inspired Dystopian works, that were then repopularized when current global political events triggered a new wave of citizen fears.
Thanks to George Orwell, the adjective, "Orwellian" describes a situation, idea, or societal condition which is destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. Well-known dystopian novels include:
Origins of Dystopian Fiction
Surprisingly, one of the first modern Dystopian novels was written by Jack London in 1908, titled The Iron Heel, portraying America under tyrannical rule. It was written less than ten years before the Bolsheviks took over Russia, ushering in Communism. Another early Dystopian novel written by a priest who was monsignor to the Pope, Lord of the World (1907), was a doomsday novel in which the anti-Christ rules the end of the world. Dystopian fiction was a direct reaction to the popularity of Utopian literature in the second half of the 19th century. "Too good to be true" just wasn't realistic.
Renowned Dystopian authors include: H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Jack London, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Margaret Atwood, Lois Lowry, and Suzanne Collins.
Dystopian Stories: Bad Technology
The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick is a satirical dystopian story about a man who fixed machines, with "no business in the future."
Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick is artificial intelligence with a twist: a machine needs a human brain, which is removed and transplanted into a spaceship to pilot it in outspace.
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster is a chillingly prescient short story predicting just how dependent we would become on the Internet and smartphones over one hundred years later.
The Pendulum by Ray Bradbury is about an imprisoned scientist responsible for killing the world's most gifted scientists when his time machine exploded and turned them to ash.
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells appears at first to be a utopia, but ultimately reveals itself as a nightmarish capitalist dystopia. The Food of the Gods is his sci-fi satire about scientists who take technology too far; a superfood grows kids into giants.
Dystopian Stories: Bad Environment
The Empire of the Ants by H.G. Wells is about humans' tenuous dominion on Earth, in which a Brazilian captain attempts to defeat a seemingly unstoppable plague of ants. If you can't get enough about ants, here's a summary of one of our absolute favorite stories of all time, Leiningen Versus the Ants.
Beyond the Door by Philip K. Dick is about the lonely life of the bird in a cuckoo clock; can it love and hate as easily as a real animal?
Tony and the Beetles by Philip K. Dick is about an intergalactic war in which the enemy, a fleet of shiny-shelled insects, was grossly underestimated, even by Tony and his beetle friends.
The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs is a "lost world" story, on the heels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, both are about a broken ecosystem in which individual metomorphosis prevails, rather than evolution. Humans battling dinosaurs, it's a precursor to a favorite dystopian novel-to-movie, Jurassic Park.
The Scarlet Plague by Jack London explores life after a devastating plague kills most of humanity.
The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel is about an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole in which Jeffson discovers that the universe is a place of strife between two powers competing for dominance.
Dystopian Stories: Lost Freedom
Anthem by Ayn Rand is about a new Dark Age where "I" has been replaced by "we" -- Equality 7-2521 and his girlfriend escape to plan a new society based on individualism.
2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. To be or naught to be?
Asleep in Armageddon by Ray Bradbury is about a lone man with the entire world to himself. "Ah, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come..." (Hamlet reference)
In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne is not a typical Jules Verne story; less focus on technology and science (hard science fiction), more of a socio-political state of the world story (soft science fiction).
A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells is about time travelers who come upon an Earth controlled by a single World Government.
The Repairer of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers is itself a dystopia, in which the author invites the reader to disbelieve the authenticity of the story's events (the protagonist is an unreliable narrator because he sustained a head injury and is committed to an insane asylum). He becomes ultra-paranoid and may have committed murder after reading a censored play, The King in Yellow, which itself is a false document the author tries to convince the reader is authentic. A true dystopian horror story.
Dystopian Novels: Lost Freedom
When William Came by H.H. Munro (SAKI) is a futuristic German-occupied London after a war in which England was defeated. SAKI wrote this three years before World War I, during which he was killed by a German sniper.
The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope is about euthanasia as a radical solution to the problem of the aged.
The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells is a story about a man who wakes up after 203 years to discover he's the richest man in the world. "To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before -- it commands earth and sea and sky."
The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells reveals man's insignificance in the vastness of space. "For a moment I could half believe there never was a world."
Quotes
"I resent the suggestion that a machine can make me bad. But I resent quite equally the suggestion that a machine can make me good."
-- G.K. Chesterton's Wells and the World State
"The two systems were evenly matched. Screen against screen. Warship against power station. The Centauran Empire surrounded Terra, an iron ring that couldn't be broken, rusty and corroded as it was. Radical new weapons had to be conceived, if Terra was to break out."
-- Philip K. Dick's The Variable Man
"I wrote that book in order to clear up the muddle in my own mind about innumerable social and political questions, questions I could not keep out of my work, which it distressed me to touch upon in a stupid haphazard way, and which no one, so far as I knew, had handled in a manner to satisfy my needs."
-- H.G. Wells's introduction to A Modern Utopia
"A book like Brave New World is an expression of the actual fear that modern man feels of the rationalised hedonistic society which it is within his power to create."
-- George Orwell's essay, Can Socialists Be Happy?"
"No Utopia will ever save him completely from the emotional drama of struggle, from exultations and humiliations, from pride and prostration and shame. He lives in success and failure just as inevitably as he lives in space and time."
-- H.G. Wells's Failure in a Modern Utopia
"It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently...This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a light-house projects a beam of light. But no one has absolutely proved these details.”
-- H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (Book 1, chpt 6)
"So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men."
-- H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon
“... you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”
-- Isaac Asimov's I, Robot
"'There's a body hanging from the lamppost,'' Loyce said. 'I'm going to call the cops.'
'They must know about it," Potter said. 'Or otherwise it wouldn't be there.'"
-- Philip K. Dick's The Hanging Stranger
"For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one Motto and Watch-word essentially proper to each human individual, and to the whole Race of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in earth, was always, and remains, even this: 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'"
-- M.P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud
"My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter."
-- Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
"At last he decided that I was well, and I, knowing that my mind had always been as sound as his, if not sounder, "paid my tuition" as he jokingly called it, and left. I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake."
-- Robert W. Chambers's The Repairer of Reputations
"We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"
-- Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Discussion Questions
1. Compare the characteristics of "Dystopian" with "Utopian". Provide an example of a work from each genre.
2. Why do you think there has been renewed interest in Dystopian novels with totalitarian states, such as 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale (book or drama series)?
3. Though they share some common elements, contrast the genres of science fiction and dystopian.
4. Discuss the popular dystopian theme of man versus machine, robot or alien within the context of our modern technology-dependent world (smartphones, Alexa, the internet).
5. Consider modern day assisted suicide laws, within the context of dystopian stories in which the aged are subject to mandatory euthenasia, such as The Fixed Period, and The Giver by Lois Lowry. Compare the ethics of both types of death. Would our governments ever mandate an age for death?
6. Jules Verne (1828-1905) was one of the first science fiction writers. Choose one of his well-known works and identify a specific scientific invention in his story that remained plausible for generations before the science actually caught up.
7. Read The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster. How much of his cautionary tale has come true almost 110 years after he wrote it?
8. Aldous Huxley was gravely concerned about the power of mass media, the potential manipulation of humans with mood-altering drugs, and the misapplication of sophisticated technology. After reading a summary of his Brave New World, compare it to modern trends (e.g., fake news and the opioid epidemic). Was he right on, or did he miss the mark in his predictions?
9. What's your idea of a more terrifying dystopia: machines taking over (Isaac Asimov's I, Robot), the environment overtaking man (The Empire of the Ants by H.G. Wells), or having the entire earth to yourself (Asleep in Armageddon by Ray Bradbury)?
10. After reading Jules Verne's story, In the Year 2889, and considering what you know that he didn't, write your own dystopian short story set in the future.
Useful Links
A Dystopian Future Lesson Plans, grades 9-10
Lesson Plan: Finding the Science Behind Science Fiction
The Giver: What are Utopias and Dystopias?
Lesson Plan grades 9-12: The War of the Worlds
A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction
18 Perfect Short Stories That Pack a Punch
TED Talk: How to Recognize a Dystopia
2011: A Brave New Dystopia (Chris Hedges)
The Curious Origin of the Word 'Dystopia'
Overview of the World of Science Fiction
The Time Machine: Communist Utopia/Capitalist Dystopia
Biography and Works by Jules Verne
Biography and Works by H.G. Wells
Biography and Works by George Orwell
Biography and Works by Isaac Asimov
Biography and Works by Ray Bradbury
Notes/Teacher Comments
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