Society and the Rise of Dystopian Fiction

A speculative essay into popular Culture

Dystopian fiction has been around for quite a while. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 seem to be the classic triumvirate of dystopian novels. But they all predate the new millennium. 1984 and Brave New World represent opposing views of the future from the mid 1900s, with Fahrenheit 451 filling a similar role, although Ray Bradbury was more of a consummate science fiction writer and less of a prophet of doom in the way Huxley and Orwell were.

But that was the last millennium. With the new millennium has come a new advent of dystopian fiction, often targeted to young adults. It is a rise that I have found interesting, so I hopped on Wikipedia to see if it had any noteworthy observations. According to the Infallible Encyclopedia, Divergent, The Hunger Games, The Giver and The Maze Runner all represent dystopian fiction, along with the video game Half-Life 2. I’ve watched the first two Hunger Games movies, played Half-Life 2, read The Maze Runner and seen the trailers for Divergent and The Giver, so I’m clearly over-qualified to discuss the rise of dystopian fiction in the early 2000s.

I believe that fiction often reflects a culture’s “mood,” if you will, addressing its anxieties or showcasing its faults. Brave New World, published after the First World War, clearly reflects the impact of that conflict, which introduced modern mechanized warfare: aircraft, automatic weapons, tanks, and massive casualties. European chivalry was slaughtered by scientific advancements on Flander’s Fields, and Huxley’s book dwells on a future consumed by technological achievements and lost in decadence.

In contrast, the Second World War was only slightly more technologically sophisticated, but it showcased the power of conflicting ideologies, which completely trumped traditional political forces. No doubt the efficiency of the Russian and German secret police, the thoroughness of their propaganda agencies, and the willingness of their people to engage in self-censorship, groupthink and “double-think” tremendously influenced Orwell and Bradbury’s books, where an omnipresent state reigns supreme.

But time went on, and the “Free World” proved that it could hold back what it deemed the ideologically toxic tide of Communism. The 1960s onward were optimistic: Star Trek, where a benign Federation has conquered racism and poverty, Red Dawn, where America triumphs against the Soviet Union, and the Tom Swift Jr. series, where technology promises a host of new blessings to the gifted and intelligent. At times, the culture reflected desperation, but it also reflected determination and the promise of ultimate success. And the enemy was, by and large, them, some external outward force.

In a dystopia, by contrast, well… “We have met the enemy, and they are us.” As Wikipedia notes, the protagonist in a dystopian story is almost always a member of said dystopian society.

Which brings us back around to The Hunger Games. What do current authors see in today’s world that makes them pessimistic about the future? For Huxley, Bradbury, and Orwell, it was high technology fused with government overreach and human complacency. What are Collins, Roth and Dashner writing that is resonating with today’s readers? Are we pessimistic about the future in a way we have not been for over sixty years? Who will win the next presidential election?

I do not know the answer to all of those questions, but if I was to speculate, I would guess that modern culture has been very colored by skepticism about the current state of Western civilization. The average American, at least, seems cynical about politics and many of them are increasingly distrustful of advanced technology and the way it is being used: domestic wiretaps, drone warfare, and metadata collection: all recent news items that were probably all described someone on the blogosphere as “Orwellian.”

Bradbury saw a world that was willing to censor certain topics, and envisioned a world where all books were destroyed–perhaps inspired bythe destruction of literature by the Nazis and the Soviets and the Communist-hunting ventures in the United States. Orwell saw war’s potential to strip power from the people and prop up dictatorial regimes; so he wrote a book with never-ending war without victory or defeat. Huxley, no doubt noting trends away from Victorian-era propriety, visualized a world with sexual mores so loose that “sex ed” began in preschool.

Similarly, perhaps the Capital district in the Hunger Games is a radical version of today’s Washington, D.C., which mimics Washington’s vast money-collecting schemes on much grander scales, leaving each district radically impoverished. In The Giver, attempts to shield human beings from fear or failure (essentially, an extreme left-wing vision for the world) are envisioned as a dystopia. And Half-Life and The Maze Runner toy with the idea of government overreach in the name of progress; Dashner’s book deals with tremendous efforts to combat a plague, as I recall, while Gordan Freeman’s enemy in Half-Life 2, Dr. Breem, is enthusiastic about the prospects for human augmentation, and wants to expand humanity’s horizons by being a puppet leader for an advanced alien regime. (He also employs advanced contraceptive technology that prevents people from reproducing, which might help explain why he is so enthusiastically outed.) It’s not hard to see how concerns over “mission creep” inside the Federal government might have influenced Dashner, while more extreme attempts to coddle humanity through government, or improve and control all aspects of life through science, might have found their way into The Giver or Half-Life 2, even subconsciously. Perhaps the fear of modern technology and an out-of-control government explains, at least in part, the popularity of dystopian fiction: what was old is new again.

Now if only we can figure out why Twilight was so popular.