Speculative Fiction: Home

Credit: Andrés Guzmán

A few weeks into the era of President Donald Trump, a funny thing happened: people rushed out to buy George Orwell’s novel 1984. For those who aren’t familiar with the dystopian tale, it’s about an authoritarian government that scrutinises everything, spreads propaganda and rewrites the truth. Sound familiar?

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• A background story of war, revolution, uprising, overpopulation, natural disaster or some other climactic event which resulted in dramatic changes to society.

• A standard of living among the lower and middle class that is generally poorer than in contemporary society. This is not always the case, however, in Brave New World people enjoy much higher material living standards in exchange for the loss of other qualities in their lives, such as independent thought and emotional depth.

• A protagonist who questions society, often feeling intuitively that something is terribly wrong.

• As dystopian literature typically depicts events that take place in the future, it often features technology more advanced than that of contemporary society. Usually, this advanced technology is controlled exclusively by the group in power, while the oppressed population is limited to a rather primitive technology.

• Dystopian fiction typically extrapolates current trends and developments into the future. It is not enough to show people living in an unpleasant society. The society must have similarities to today, of the reader's own experience. If the reader can identify the patterns or trends that would lead to the dystopia, it becomes a more involving and effective experience.

• There is usually a group of people who are not under the complete control of the state, and in whom the hero of the novel usually puts his or her hope, although he or she still fails to change anything. In 1984 by George Orwell they are the "proles" (short for "proletariat"), in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley they are the people on the reservation, and in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, they are the "book people" past the river and outside the city.

• If destruction is not possible, escape may be, if the dystopia does not control the world. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the main character succeeds in fleeing and finding people who have dedicated themselves to memorizing books to preserve them.

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