Dystopian Worlds: Do they predict the future?

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2.” The movie releases in U.S. theaters on Nov. 20, 2015. (Murray Close/Lionsgate via AP)

Do dystopian books predict the dark future we’re headed to, or are they simply some wild imaginative scenarios in the genius minds? Dystopian ideas go way back, when John Stuart Mill, gave a speech in 1868 before the British House of Commons, criticizing the government’s policy, saying, “It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dystopian, or cacotopias. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favor is too bad to be practicable.”

Thus began the anti-utopian or dystopian, but what is a dystopian? As the word utopian, they’re both derived from the Greek language, and dystopian literally means “a bad place”. A utopian society has been going around since ancient Greek philosopher introduced the concept of “a perfect city”, but recently, the dystopian mindset took over.

A dystopian society is a frightening or undesirable society to live in, and most of the imaginative dystopian scenarios in the future include a terrorizing government, a futuristic power over human and environmental disasters. Most dystopian futures show the government as ruthless as ever, but the important thing to notice is, how robots and cyber technology aren’t considered such a wonderful aspect of life anymore, in most imaginative scenarios for the future, the machine takes control and kills us all, or another species end all human existence.

But would someone know if they were living in a dystopian world? Janni Lee Simner addresses this idea as she brings up the idea in relation to Ally Condie’s dystopian YA book “Matched”, where a young girl’s life is entirely arranged for her by society, down to who she is allowed to marry, which typically falls under the dystopian genre. But in our own world and society, arranged marriages are not uncommon, and not all are opposed to the idea of having a spouse chosen for them. According to this argument, some people within the dystopic society may not recognize or care that they are part of a dystopian society, and therefore, is it still a dystopia?

Government dystopia in literature:

When you try reading dystopian literature, you’d be surprised by the amounts of books written about a far worse governments ruling the future. According to numerous writers, governments are going to be brutal in the future, having the aid of technology and people’s fear of what’s going to happen to them now. The government promises safety in exchange of almost everything else, like freedom and having your own unique traits and most people comply because according to them they’ve seen worse.

There are some typical dystopian novels, which are simply post-apocalyptic, the earth had seen some kind of a natural disaster, and those left are eating each other, literally. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is one example of this subgenre, people have seen the apocalypse happening in this novel, and gradually everything changed around them. The conflict between the father and his son, who was born after the apocalypse happening, in how they view the world is completely different.

That novel had no governmental body, but one with an evident ruling and ruthless government is the famous trilogy “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, which shows a televised annual death match for the wealthy, featuring kids chosen every year, to fight each other to death. In this world, people have no way to oppose the government. Another example is the short story “The Lottery” by Shirely Jackson which was released 60 years pre-Hunger Games, but it’s arguably the inspiration behind the “annual death match held by the government” concept in “The Hunger Games”.

And the ruthless governments don’t stop there, as there are too many examples. In Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World”, a new species of human called “epsilons” are made from constant brainwashing since they’re born, and the brainwashing continues in another classic “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, with a government that wiped everyone’s memories and emotions that they have no idea they live in the worst world possible. And who can deny fiction’s worst government in George Orwell’s “1984”, with the big brother watching everyone.

Does fiction predict that governments in the future will subdue any or every hope in revolting? Or will it take some daring ‘explosion’ to wake people up like what happened in “V for Vendetta”

Human-less future in cinema:

Emilia Clarke in a scene from “Terminator: Genisys,? the fifth film in the series created by James Cameron in 1984. (Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures via AP)

While literature keeps suggesting that the real-life governments are going to get worse, movies suggest that humans whatsoever have no place in the future. As one of the movie franchises suggests, monkeys could take over the planet in “Planet of the Apes” with its first movie released in 1968. Another franchise suggests that robots own the future which is the “Terminator” franchise with its latest movie “Terminator: Genisys” showing us a future where a simple application took over the planet, with a future owned by the machines.

Another form for machines taking over is the stimulated reality subgenre with plenty of examples showing us another version of our reality, not necessarily in the future, but could be considered parallel with our world. Disney’s “Tomorrowland” and the classic franchise “The Matrix” are an example of a mash-up between technology taking over and a stimulated reality where the world is completely different.

And whether you imagine a dystopian world where kids plainly kill each other like in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” or a technological dystopia like in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s classic novel “We”, or even a world where people live underground for decades after a natural disaster, and generations not even knowing how the sun feels like as in Jeanne DuPrau’s series “The City of Ember”, it’s apparent that the future is unpredictable.

And as the author John Joseph Adam likes to put it, “Dystopias are often seen as “cautionary tales,” but the best dystopias are not didactic screeds, and the best dystopias do not draw their power from whatever political/societal point they might be making; the best dystopias speak to the deeper meanings of what it is to be one small part of a teeming civilization… and of what it is to be human.”