The Republic of Heaven

Choose your dystopian future

Talk about other books here

Choose your dystopian future

Postby Anoria » Mon Feb 15, 2010 5:43 am

This is a question sparked by discussions, in private and on irc, about Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Of all the unpleasant futures or alternate pasts you've seen in books and films or any other sort of fiction (real history doesn't count), if you had to pick one to participate in, which would it be?

I'll leave it up to you whether to restrict these ideas to just Earth, or further in the future on other worlds.
Hey baby, what's your callsign?

Image
Image Image
ImageImageImage
User avatar
Anoria
Solver
 
Posts: 2470
Joined: Sun Dec 28, 2003 5:43 am
AOL: telcontara177
Location: montereys coast

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Jaya » Mon Feb 15, 2010 4:52 pm

Can you please provide a list of potential dystopian futures/alt-realities/otherworlds that we could choose from? I'm too lazy to go find myself a book and am having trouble recalling more than a few.
"To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
-Henry David Thoreau

Image
Image
ImageImageImageImageImage
User avatar
Jaya
Je ne suis pas une sraffie.
 
Posts: 2357
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2005 7:41 pm
Location: London

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Darragh » Mon Feb 15, 2010 5:14 pm

Does Minority Report count as a dystopian future? I mean it's actually pretty awesome. :? Maybe it's both utopian and dystopian. If not then I'd say Blade Runner because it had a nice multi cultural vibe.
User avatar
Darragh
Entirely Adequate
 
Posts: 5515
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:41 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Anoria » Mon Feb 15, 2010 6:36 pm

Can you please provide a list of potential dystopian futures/alt-realities/otherworlds that we could choose from? I'm too lazy to go find myself a book and am having trouble recalling more than a few.
I was having a similar problem myself. I'll list the ones that come to mind or to Wiki, but anyone who has another in mind is certainly welcome to bring it up instead.

Authors not included because it would mean closing italics tags on every line and I'm lazy
1984
Fahrenheit 451
Snow Crash
Farnham's Freehold
Brave New World
Anthem
Soylent Green
We
Harrison Bergeron
A Clockwork Orange
The Handmaid's Tale

And so on. Wikipedia has lists of dystopian books, films, comics, and games, if more inspiration is sought.
Hey baby, what's your callsign?

Image
Image Image
ImageImageImage
User avatar
Anoria
Solver
 
Posts: 2470
Joined: Sun Dec 28, 2003 5:43 am
AOL: telcontara177
Location: montereys coast

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby kaoshoneybun » Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:54 am

Oooo, what a great thread!

I really wouldn't like to live in the world of Atwood's Oryx and Crake or Mattheson's I am Legend.
As for a nice Utopia to live in, the Earth of Star Trek sounds quite nice even though you never get to see a lot of it - they've abolished money and racism.
Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

William Blake, A Little Girl Lost
User avatar
kaoshoneybun
Gyptian
 
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 8:58 am
Website: http://kaoshoneybun.deviantart.com/
Location: Hampshire, UK

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Peter » Sun Feb 28, 2010 5:22 pm

Eugenics aside, we're already living in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

As for Utopias, I'll settle for Iain M Banks' Culture. Effing big spaceships, you live as long as you like, you only have to do work you enjoy and there's oodles of sex! What more could you want?

The other dystopia we're living in is EM Forster's The Machine Stops (1909). Forster's portrayal of present-day Internet culture (people blog, have flists, do webcasts) is breath-taking in its predictive accuracy.
User avatar
Peter
Not an endangered species
 
Posts: 5212
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2003 11:36 am
Website: http://www.cereswunderkind.net
Location: Oakingham

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Aletheia Dolorosa » Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:10 pm

Do we have to restrict ourselves to books? Because the Firefly 'verse would be a pretty shiny place to live (provided you were hanging out with a group of people like the Serenity crew, and nowhere near Reaver territory, of course). Of course Firefly and its 'shabby space' setting (as opposed to Star Trek's 'shiny space') owes a lot to the conventions established by Bladerunner.

I think Victor Kelleher does the best dystopias. Of course, no one besides Raphael will know what I'm talking about, but I encourage you all, at the very least, to read Parkland, Taronga and The Beast of Heaven and then come back to me (ashen-faced and looking suspiciously at every human being you encounter) and we'll talk about dystopias! :lol: I have not read books by any other author that caused me to so profoundly question my own humanity (and whether we should use the word 'humanity' to mean 'superior compassion') or shatter so many of my own convictions. I wish his work was more widely known outside Australia, as I think it's among the best literature - not only SF/F, but literature in general - that I've ever read.

I'm probably getting a bit too gushy, but I really do recommend these works very highly. I've only mentioned his two best known dystopic works (Parkland and Taronga) and the book which is in my opinion his best (The Beast of Heaven) but he's written many others and most of them are well worth reading.
Image
'There are few things in this world that couldn't be improved by adding vampires to them.' - Scott Westerfeld
ImageImage
ImageImage
More melodrama/Even more melodrama/Sexiest Female Sraffie, Best Signature, Cam Whore, 2008 Sraffie Awards
Avatar from Scandinavia and the World
User avatar
Aletheia Dolorosa
Wednesday's Child
 
Posts: 4522
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2003 12:22 am
Website: http://dolorosa12.wordpress.com/
Location: At the top of the Inviolate Tower

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Mr Anderson » Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:48 pm

Communism that works would be good. Imagining my own future here.
IDIOT, n.
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.
User avatar
Mr Anderson
Witch
 
Posts: 623
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 3:51 pm
Location: The Athens of the North

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Peter » Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:54 am

Communism that works would be good. Imagining my own future here.
That sounds rather like The Culture, one of my favourite Utopias.
User avatar
Peter
Not an endangered species
 
Posts: 5212
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2003 11:36 am
Website: http://www.cereswunderkind.net
Location: Oakingham

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Philharmonic » Fri May 21, 2010 11:16 am

Why dystopian? Utopian futures are much more nice.

But anyway, I'd go with the one from Star Trek XI. I'm not sure if it counts as dystopian but still, I wouldn't mind.

FOLLOWUP: No, it doesn't. OK, Terminator Salvation.
Image

Stardate 53476.8. Captain's log. Still won't flush. I'll try again later.
User avatar
Philharmonic
Angel
 
Posts: 932
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2008 7:28 pm
Location: Some small corner of a foreign field that is forever England

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Jaya » Tue Nov 02, 2010 8:44 pm

Was reading this article over at io9, and thought of this thread. Thought sraffies might like a read.
"To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
-Henry David Thoreau

Image
Image
ImageImageImageImageImage
User avatar
Jaya
Je ne suis pas une sraffie.
 
Posts: 2357
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2005 7:41 pm
Location: London

Re: Choose your dystopian future

Postby Peter » Tue Nov 02, 2010 11:19 pm

They left out the original Corporations Own You dystopia - Pohn and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants.
User avatar
Peter
Not an endangered species
 
Posts: 5212
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2003 11:36 am
Website: http://www.cereswunderkind.net
Location: Oakingham


Return to “%s” Other Books

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

Content © 2001-2011 BridgeToTheStars.Net.
Images from The Golden Compass movie are © New Line Cinema.
cron