Guest post
by Massimo Marino
The word dystopian comes from the ancient greek with δυσ-, “bad, hard”,and τόπος, “place.” Alternatively it can also be called cacotopia, or anti-utopia.
Many dystopias describe an utopian society where good-life seems to have been achieved, but suffers by at least one fatal issue. Whereas utopian societies are founded on aspiring to the general well-being, a dystopian society’s dreams of improvement are overshadowed by a repression of any sort and origin, at times even a benevolent repression.
The society appears in stories staged on a speculative and visionary future and are characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian rules, ecological and environmental disasters or other events associated with a cataclysmic decline in the society fabric.
A famous one is Fahrenheit 451, where the state burns all books out of fear of what they may incite in the individuals, and the more recent The Hunger Games, where a government holds control of its people by maintaining a constant state of fear through annual fight to the death competitions.
Dystopias have taken a multitude of forms and create very compelling stories that touch on issues of our own society: corruption, poverty, violence, pollution, or political repression. Even if placed in the future, technology may, or may not be more advanced than in the present. In some cases, humanity has been brought to face a total collapse of the world as we know it and the fights for survival set in.
Some dystopian fictions emphasize the pressure to conform to a flattened society, as a requirement not to excel. In these fictions, the society is ruthlessly egalitarian, in which ability and accomplishment, or even competence, are suppressed or stigmatized as forms of inequality. Again, in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the dystopia represses the intellectuals with a particular brutality and subverts pillars of our society like the concept of family; a clear case of dehumanization dystopian organizations.
Both the principles of utopian and dystopian societies can be idealistic, with the goal of attaining positive stability for its members, but in dystopias the result has oppressive consequences for the inhabitants of the planet. The oppression and repression can be subtle and the perception of a utopian society lingers for a certain duration of the story, until a Hero becomes aware of the flaws and decides to intervene. Some fine examples come from such films and stories as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Brazil.
In dystopia, characters are at the mercy of the controlled society even if, at epidermic level, they might have the impression of living the good life. People enjoy higher living standards in exchange for the loss of other values such as independent thought and emotional depth. Humanity lives in a glorious state of comfort, but has given up what gives life its meaning.
The backstory of a disaster, a war, a critical global climatic change, or an encounter of the third type, is introduced early in the narrative and it creates the stage for the story evolution. The historic events trigger the shift from previous social norms to a changed society and new, often disturbing, social organization.
Unlike other fictions where an improbable, outcast main character evolves through the typical Arc of the Hero, often dystopias feature a prominent personality of the new society as the protagonist who senses that something terribly wrong is going on, despite the ‘utopian’ outlook. The hero’s point of view clashes with the others’, and reveals that concepts of utopia and dystopia are related and the only difference between them lies on a matter of opinion.
The story is often—but not always—unresolved even if the hero manages to escape or destroy the dystopia. That is, the individuals who are unsatisfied, and rebel, ultimately fail to change anything. Dystopian works may convey a sense of hopelessness in contrast with much fiction of the future, in which a hero succeeds in resolving conflicts or otherwise changes things for the better.
All we said about dystopian, and its duality with utopian fictions and visioned societies, can also be told about my work in progress, “The Daimones Trilogy.”
Massimo Marino is the author of Daimones. His background is in science and he spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. Learn more about him from his Amazon author page.
There’s a slight distinction between “dys” and “caca” (PERFECT term for it). Dys just means it’s messed-up and harmful, but “cac” implies the worst possible. Thus one of my favorite words (especially lately), kakistocracy–government by the worst possible elements of society.
Nice to see your comments here. I LOVE, LOVE your covers.
Thanks, Linton. Much appreciated. I try to narrate a novel starting from its cover, too.
I agree entirely with you, and I like the term cacotopia better than dystopia to refer to ‘an opposite’: it’s the one nadir equivalent of the zenith of an utopia. As you say well, dystopia is somewhere in between.
Which in certain cases though it is appropriate when a certain society organization is apparently utopian, everything is carefully managed and supervised, ‘for the better good’, while in reality it is flawed.
That’s the funny thing about us. Few of us would want to live in Plato’s Republic or Erewhon, would we?
Maybe for a week, a brief visit to enlarge our horizon of events 🙂
An excellent article, Massimo; and one which stimulates that unremitting (sometimes submerged) speculation about this planet’s future state of being.
I read Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, as an assignment while I was at school; I didn’t like it much (the vision of it) but I enjoyed the debate it prompted. After reading ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, which alarmed me, when I was fifteen; I read somewhere that Orwell was influenced by Jack London’s ‘Iron Heel’ and was compelled to search that out. Not so very long after that I read a new sci-fi/dystopian book called ‘Logan’s Run’, co-written by William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson. Suffice to say that by the close of my teens I felt I’d had enough dystopia to last me a lifetime. That lasted at least ten years.
Now, in my sixties, with the rush towards globalisation, population explosion, pollution of the planet and the evidence of global warming becoming more and more obvious, I had to write my vision of hope for the future. I have something in common with London’s book in that I have, for the most part, a female protagonist first person POV, but that is where the similarity ends; ‘Heather Skye Wilson is The Psychic Warrior’ is a vision of hope for the future, more utopian than dystopian or cacotopyan. You’ve got to have hope; don’t you? Well… I have.
Great post, Massimo, and I too love your cover art.
Thank you, TD. When I child I watched ‘Logan’s Run’ at the movie theater, I suspect Hugh Howie did too 😉 I believe dystopia and cacotopia reflect the fear of the present and the unknown of the future.
The things you mention can virally lead to a dystopian world, created with the intention of ‘bring peace’, ‘maintain security’, and hang on to a false sense of general well being. Our world, today, has the germs for a veer into well-intened dystopian futures… But as you say, you’ve got to have hope, and hope was the only thing, in addition to family love bonds, that kept my characters in “The Daimones Trilogy” at the edge of the cliff into madness. Without hope, they’d done as the lemmings do.
Besides, ‘1984’ is here already, but hidden 😉
Oh yes indeed, it’s here alright; ‘Big Brother’ is watching you, and me, and Lin, and anyone else with independant thought. So I guess ‘Big Brother’ is watching IU with a keen interest.
😉
Great post Massimo! I’ve just finished reading Hugh Howey’s ‘Dust’, the final part of the Wool story arc. It’s a powerful story based on the cacotopyan model, yet somehow it was uplifting in a way most dystopian [sic] novels aren’t.
I think I’m a lot like TD, I need to believe there’s hope because the children of my children’s children are still my children too, and I’d want them to have a future.
We humans can’t seem to make up our minds whether we want to be angels or demons and that’s reflected in the worlds we create, both on paper and in real life.
Thanks, Flory, for your comments.
Hope is a must to keep going on even when the rational mind screams “it’s over”. And yet, it is probably thanks to hope that the human race overcame so many ‘dark periods’ during its evolution.
I too believe we, everyone, have inherent to our personalities the capability to act with the extreme good in mind, and the extreme evil, too.
As I also reflect in my novels, through my characters, we perceive light because there’s darkness. But even the feeble light of a frail candle is enough to pierce through extreme blackness.