The Sword and Laser discussion
Dystopia vs. utopia
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Only thing I can think is the end of Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Check out my debut feature: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Broke-...
Brave New World is a dystopia any way you look. It is a textbook right-wing totalitarian regime, just like 1984 is on the opposite end of the totalitarian spectrum, being left-wing totalitarian.The more obvious utopic future I can think of is the whole Startrek world. And since it is only utopic by today's standards. I'm here taking making an axis with total dystopic in one extreme, and perfection (total utopic) on the other. Startrek is utopic, but not on the extreme end.
The Startrek utopia is very alluring, because it is something that we can (mostly) see happening.
Babylon 5 universe also ends up in utopia, although there are no specific books on that period, as far as I can tell. The utopia itself is only seen in the TV series. In this case, if we are not on the "perfect" end of the spectrum, it is pretty close.
Rodrigo wrote: "Brave New World is a dystopia any way you look. It is a textbook right-wing totalitarian regime, just like 1984 is on the opposite end of the totalitarian spectrum, being left-wing totalitarian.I think Kim Jong Il would have felt quite differently.
Firstname wrote: "I think Kim Jong Il would have felt quite differently."Maybe. Then again, he is not exactly a standard for intelligence and sanity, is he?
Brave New World's society is based on the idea that "consumption" is the most important social virtue.
1984's roots can be traced back to Karl Marx, although very distorted. Even if one could make a case it is a possible evolution of the socialist society Marx proposed, but that is a can of worms I really don't want to open here.
Utopias: Utopia(who would have thought), Herland (Feminist utopia, written in 1915), Lost Horizon (where the term Shangri-La comes from), and of course, the last book of Gulliver's Travels (the other three are dystopian). All are Ideal societies in which everyone is content, and taken care of. Important to note that in every one of these stories it is people from the outside coming in and observing. A pov from someone living in these societies would be free of conflict or doubt and probably quite boring.
Dystopian fiction, by contrast, is about a society where there is great inequality (The Time Machine) or society itself is breaking down and no longer serving the people (rather they are serving it (Animal Farm). These stories usually have a protagonist who is "waking up" to the problems in his world.
Note: Anyone else ever notice that utopias are set in the present, while dystopias are often set in the future?
Honestly, everyone book that claims to be a "utopia," that I have read, ends up seeming way more like a "dystopia"! I can't actually think of a single text that provides an example of a true utopia. Maybe there really is no such thing as a perfect place, and thus it can't even be imagined. People have different ideas of what is "good" and what is "bad" so it is hard to be definitive about either one.
Daran wrote: "Utopias: Utopia(who would have thought), Herland (Feminist utopia, written in 1915), Lost Horizon (where the term Shangri-La comes from), and of course, the last book of Gulliver's Travels (the oth..."Herland definitely isn't an utopia for males. Utopia depends on what each person thinks would be ideal; it's not an "objective" standard by any means. One of the societies in The Dispossessed had allegedly no inequality at all, yet it wasn't an utopia.
Rodrigo wrote: "Firstname wrote: "I think Kim Jong Il would have felt quite differently."Maybe. Then again, he is not exactly a standard for intelligence and sanity, is he?
Who said he had to be? If only standard-bearers for intelligence and sanity are allowed to talk about books/ideas, then what are we all doing here?
Island is actually the utopia counterpart to Brave New World. I have both but have yet to read them.
Firstname wrote: "only standard-bearers for intelligence and sanity are allowed to talk about books/ideas?"Yes, I am :D
(yes, I'm paraphrasing. Suits the occasion, doesn't it?)
Rodrigo wrote: "Brave New World is a dystopia any way you look."No, the World State is only dystopian if you share the Savage's cultural prejudices. What makes the book so much more brilliant than 1984 is that from the perspective of the people actually living in the World State, it's a utopia -- everyone is happy all the time. Everyone has a job to which they're perfectly suited, they have all the sex they want without getting straddled with the burden of children, and they have drugs galore. And this is certainly intentional on Huxley's part since the society is largely based upon the first utopia, Plato's Republic. To view the book as nothing but a nightmarish future is to completely miss the point.
What exactly is the opposite of dystopia? Is it where everyone has an equal chance at happiness? A hunter-gatherer existence in a lush, natural world? A highly advanced society where crime is prevented before harm comes to others? Can there be some trade-off, where some people's lives suck for the betterment of the rest? Is the opposite of dystopian really all about perfection, or just our current (1st) world, warts and all, before the bomb drops/plague spreads/government collapses?
Sean wrote: "Rodrigo wrote: "Brave New World is a dystopia any way you look."No, the World State is only dystopian if you share the Savage's cultural prejudices."
Actually, Sean, the frame of reference for "dystopic" should be ours. Not the World State population, or the people from the savage reservation.
To view the book as nothing but a nightmarish future is to completely miss the point
Oh, I totally agree with that. Which is why I proposed a sliding scale from Dystopic to Utopic, and not just those 2 states, in a previous post.
Robert of Dale wrote: "What exactly is the opposite of dystopia?"
Dystopia was a word coined to be the opposite of Utopia.
As for what an utopic world/society would be like, I guess if you ask 1000 people, you will get 1000 different answers.
Rodrigo wrote: "Actually, Sean, the frame of reference for "dystopic" should be ours. Not the World State population, or the people from the savage reservation."In that case it's not "a dystopia any way you look" -- it's only dystopian from certain perspectives, at which point the idea of "dystopia" becomes nothing more than a term for "a place I wouldn't want to live." From the perspective of a Calvin or Qutb, modern America is a horrible dystopia, so why does our view get privileged over theirs?
Sean wrote: "Rodrigo wrote: "Actually, Sean, the frame of reference for "dystopic" should be ours. Not the World State population, or the people from the savage reservation."In that case it's not "a dystopia ..."
Well put. The Western POV is not the "right" or "only" one.
I think it should be said that from a literary tool standpoint, utopia and dystopia are very similar. They both use fictional societies to showcase problems in our society.Utopias, by definition, can not be applied to the whole world. They lack something that the author felt made the world a less than ideal place (want, stupidity, patriarchy, lawyers). Utopias exist out of context with history, they are satirical representations of a given social theory.
Dystopias are places where an aspect of society has grown disproportionately powerful (government, patriarchy, lawyers). They are non satirical, and part of the wider world.
Literary utopias are not attempts by the author to describe the perfect society. They are concerned with one social issue.
While the Republic is a utopia, it is more properly an attempt at social engineering. Like The City on the Hill, New Harmony, and all that stuff Andrew Kellog did. It falls under, "If everyone else just left me and my friends in charge, the world would be a much better place."
Rodrigo wrote: "Dystopia was a word coined to be the opposite of Utopia.As for what an utopic world/society would be like, I guess if you ask 1000 people, you will get 1000 different answers. "
See, I always understood "dystopia" to mean a society that was presented as or claimed to be a utopia, but in actuality was far from it. And most such dystopian works were written as literary takedowns of real-world "utopian" viewpoints. E.g., "This is why communism/consumerism/fascism/eugenics/etc. is a bad idea."
These days it seems the term "dystopia" basically means--as Sean noted--"a place I wouldn't want to live." William Gibson noted this in an interview a couple of years ago:
INTERVIEWER
The world of the Sprawl is often called dystopian.
GIBSON
Well, maybe if you’re some middle-class person from the Midwest. But if you’re living in most places in Africa, you’d jump on a plane to the Sprawl in two seconds. Many people in Rio have worse lives than the inhabitants of the Sprawl.
I’ve always been taken aback by the assumption that my vision is fundamentally dystopian. I suspect that the people who say I’m dystopian must be living completely sheltered and fortunate lives. The world is filled with much nastier places than my inventions, places that the denizens of the Sprawl would find it punishment to be relocated to, and a lot of those places seem to be steadily getting worse.
Because conflict generates drama, it is hard for true utopias to be the setting for stories. When you have them, the main character tends to be an antisocial rebel from the Utopia (e.g., "Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight, which was adapted into a great Twilight Zone episode).The closest I can think of for SF is Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind (after they freed the underpeople).
You can, however, find little utopias inside larger worlds. For example, the Ogier's steddings in the Wheel of Time seemed pretty idyllic ...
Most of the citizens of Iain M Banks's Culture would consider their environment utopia.
Daran wrote: "For a science fiction Utopia, The Songs Of Distant Earth fits the bill nicely."Good reference!
Rodrigo wrote: "Firstname wrote: "only standard-bearers for intelligence and sanity are allowed to talk about books/ideas?"Yes, I am :D
(yes, I'm paraphrasing. Suits the occasion, doesn't it?)"
This is an occasion for ridiculous hubris? If you say so...
A 2 book series with pretty good examples of utopian and dystopian societies is the Empyrion Series by Stephen R. Lawhead. The books are The Search for Fierra & The Siege of DomeAnd, like Daran says, they are both used to illustrate 2 distinct and opposite worldviews and their specific social implications.
C.S. Lewis' Narnia series starts out as a dystopia (depending on the order one reads the books in) but winds up as a utopia and then literally in heaven.
Heinlein's future where Lazarus Long lives (Time Enough for Love and other novels) seems to be pretty utopian.
Walden Two was damn near unreadable, but it's a behaviorist utopia. (I read it when I was a teenager -- who knows, maybe I'd enjoy it now!)
One man's Utopia is another man's dystopia.Anyway, Ursula K. Le Guin's novels are considered utopian. Also Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Anyway, Ursula K. Le Guin's novels are considered utopian. Also Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy"
One of my favorite LeGuin books is dystopian, The Telling. The main character leaves a dystopian Earth because of the religious tyranny. She then lives in an anti-religious tyranny.
One of my favorite LeGuin books is dystopian, The Telling. The main character leaves a dystopian Earth because of the religious tyranny. She then lives in an anti-religious tyranny.
William Morris wrote News from Nowhere, Or, an Epoch of Rest: Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance. Islandia migth be utopian, everything is not perfect but it is better.
Let's look at this one from a writer's standpoint for a moment.What makes a story interesting? Answer: Conflict. Conflict makes all stories interesting. Without conflict, you have no stories.
The problem here is, the more conflict you have, the less likely you are to be set in a utopia. Utopian civilizations, by definition, lack the sort of conflict that makes a story interesting.
Someone mentioned Brave New World earlier. Perfect example of a world that would be Utopian, except we needed conflict. Everyone in the world is happy and at peace, right? Except it gets subverted, becoming a dystopia in the process.
I see a lot of comments along the lines of "one man's utopia..." I view that as a bit of a relativistic cop-out. You're right; it's impossible for any one of us to agree on what the rules of a Utopian society would look like. That said, by definition a Utopia is the perfect society, one in which every person is capable of being both happy and peaceful.
Heck, Utopia itself is only interesting because Moore was using it to send up the government he was living under. The conflict was inherent in Moore's society, but is less so now. Read that book again. It's now boring.
The other thing we have to deal with as authors when trying to write a Utopia is suspension of disbelief. Remember that scene in (I commit sin here) The Matrix where the Agent describes to Neo the first Matrix? The machines built a world in which everyone was happy. Every single human in the world was perfectly at peace. And what happened? Humanity didn't buy it. It didn't feel right, so humanity rejected the system.
That little piece of the movie rings true (regardless of the rest of it, or sequels, etc.). Human beings have a hard time believing in a situation that's "too good to be true." That's why writing a utopia is almost impossible; as soon as you describe it, the suspension of disbelief your reader is holding gets that much thinner.
Dystopias, on the other hand are both deliciously full of inherent conflict, and are very easy for us to believe in.
tl;dr: Utopia is a place that's boring, hard to imagine, and eventually not credible. Dystopias are interesting and easy to believe in. That's why we see more dystopias.
I always thought The Culture in Iain M. Banks' novels seemed like a pretty good place to live. Not perfect, but pretty close by my measure.
The Culture is a good place to live in the same way as a zoo's a nice place to be a penguin. The people have no agency and are reliant upon the Minds for everything--but lucky for them, the minds are content to let them live as over-privileged frat boys.I get chills at the very idea of living in the Culture.
Is the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek intended to be a utopian society?
Dharmakirti wrote: "Is the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek intended to be a utopian society?"I'd say so. The society is utopian even if the people who participate in it don't always live up to its ideals, and the societies around it are less than perfect....
Yes, the Federation and the Culture are both material utopias. Both explore the idea of what society might be like if material needs were irrelevant. Unlike Sean, I think the Culture would be an interesting place to live, but it opens the question of what we'd do and be if material needs weren't a concern and if technology let us do things like migrate our minds to other, sometimes radical forms or move (there are several mentions in the Culture novels of people spending time as an aquatic lifeform, etc.) The conflict in both arises from the idea that material survival is not really a concern - they're post-scarcity societies. Given that.... how do humans (or humanoids) find purpose? Utopias don't have a lack of conflict - they have conflict because they're not possible societies and the ways in which reality fails to match idea gives rise to the conflict. Look at Le Guin's The Dispossessed, a novel set largely on a world where people tried to setup an anarchist utopia - it works largely, but because people are imperfect, various issues arise.
Houston, Houston Do You Read by James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon) is a good example of a utopic setting.
Steve wrote: "Houston, Houston Do You Read by James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon) is a good example of a utopic setting."Not for the guys it isn't! Although I've always wondered if that's the price.
Steve wrote: "Houston, Houston Do You Read by James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon) is a good example of a utopic setting."Thanks for letting me know James Tiptree Jr. is actually Alice Sheldon.
Houston, Houston sounds from the plot summary rather, well, sexist. An all female society that seemingly can't progress technologically (or isn't interested), that scatters plants and stuff around a ship and that stagnates because of course women cannot or would not be interested in progress and surround themselves with plants... yeah, right.Oh and the idea that and all female society would be free of conflict... man, Tiptree should have seen Mean Girls... :)
It's an interesting thread. Have there been any actual utopias which satisfy the diverse needs of each person?"Living in peace" might be a utopia for most, but I'd have to think there are some people who really love the warrior/soldier lifestyle. You start going down the path of what is normal and what is deviant pretty quickly. Most people can agree that allowing a serial killer to murder whoever he wants wouldn't be a utopia, but what about the varieties of sexual behavior?
It gets kind of messy pretty quickly. Even a simulated society in some virtual reality might not suit people, as their experiences wouldn't be "real."
Quite a conundrum.
Utopias by their very nature do not and cannot exist. Moore coined the word from greek. It's literal meaning is "no place".
That being said, I think nearly every dystopian story also has utopian elements. I'm not being relativistic here. I think a lot of dystopias are built (either intentionally or intentionally) with the veneer of utopianism. Sometimes it's a really thin veneer (1984) or it's a veneer for a very select group of people (a lot of feminist dys.) but it's almost always there.
Also, utopias are present as a kernel within dystopias that represents hope for a better world. They are the romantic vision of those trying to change the system. Or in darker stories it exists solely as the opposite of the object of horror perceived only as an absence or negative image.
I'm quite tired right now but I'm thinking that maybe all dystopias are just failed or very limited utopias. Just a thought.
That being said, I think nearly every dystopian story also has utopian elements. I'm not being relativistic here. I think a lot of dystopias are built (either intentionally or intentionally) with the veneer of utopianism. Sometimes it's a really thin veneer (1984) or it's a veneer for a very select group of people (a lot of feminist dys.) but it's almost always there.
Also, utopias are present as a kernel within dystopias that represents hope for a better world. They are the romantic vision of those trying to change the system. Or in darker stories it exists solely as the opposite of the object of horror perceived only as an absence or negative image.
I'm quite tired right now but I'm thinking that maybe all dystopias are just failed or very limited utopias. Just a thought.
Rick wrote: "Houston, Houston sounds from the plot summary rather, well, sexist. An all female society that seemingly can't progress technologically (or isn't interested), that scatters plants and stuff around ..."I'd be careful of reviews/wiki. Stagnant is not how I would have described that culture. It moved more slowly with technology, but forward nonetheless, and it seemed without the immense damage we do in our technological progress.
Matthew wrote: "a lot of feminist dys" How many are there?
How many stories are there of of glorious spacemen blasting off to other worlds while their wives wait at home, if women are mentioned at all?
Dinotopia by James Gurney is an interesting take on the utopia/distopia idea. It's written in the format of an illustrated journal. Although it does raise questions about what kind of society it might be, it treats the topic pretty lightly. It's still an interesting read.
David wrote: "Anyway, Ursula K. Le Guin's novels are considered utopian. Also Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy"One of my favorite LeGuin books is dystopian, The Telling. The main character leaves a dy..."
Sounds great! I'm doing academic research on feminist cyberpunk dystopias :) The book might be helpful. Of course, dystopia only from a feminist's perspective ;P
The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
The Utopia Reader (other topics)The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (other topics)
Brave New World (other topics)
Utopia (other topics)
Islandia (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Iain M. Banks (other topics)Ursula K. Le Guin (other topics)
Marge Piercy (other topics)
Philip K. Dick (other topics)
Stephen R. Lawhead (other topics)
I see a lot of "isn't there anything other than dystopia" questioning going on, and wonder what readers would consider the opposite?
Isn't it somewhat fair to assume that for rigid theocrats, A Handmaid's Tale is a sort of utopia? For control freaks, Brave New World is an utopia? For dolphins, The Uplift War might be a nightmare.