Difference Between Dystopian and Apocalyptic?

[J.G.]

I know this has probably been discussed, but I'm trying to nail down the difference between dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction. They seem awful similar. The only significant difference I see is that the apocalyptic world tends to happen after a major disaster, such as a nuclear war, while a dystopia creeps up on you and before you know it, things have gone to heck. Your thoughts? Any other major differences?

[Randy]

For the most part, I would agree.

You can have a dystopia without an apocalypse. And you can have an apocalypse without a resulting dystopia. But they do have a significant overlap.

And, to complicate things, one person's paradise might be another person's nightmare.

[Will]

For me, a dystopia is the opposite of a utopia. A dystopia is a broken or far from perfect society, where a utopia is a perfect society. Either (utopia or dystopia) can creep up on you or be thrust on you by an apocalyptic event.

Post apocalyptic fiction deals with what happens after an apocalypse. That can be a utopia or a dystopia or both.

Stephen King's The Stand is a post apocalyptic novel. Roughly half of the survivors went to Boulder to be nice to each other and bake their own biscuits. That's a utopia, of sorts. The other half went to see the Dark Man in Las Vegas ("lost wages") and created a dystopia.

So that's a post apoc world with both utopias and dystopias in it.

Or imagine the world that we're currently living in. That's not a post apoc world (yet!) but some parts of it are towards the utopia end of the scale and other parts are dystopian.

There does tend to be an assumption that a post apocalyptic world has to be dystopian, but for me that's a lazy assumption. If the you-know-what hit the fan, I like to think that some of us would work together on fan-cleaning duties.

[J.G.]

Will wrote: "If the you-know-what hit the fan, I like to think that some of us would work together on fan-cleaning duties...."

In America, we'd just buy a new fan. ;)