I have loved a good dystopian novel ever since reading Orwell’s 1984 in high school English class. The part of my brain dedicated to enjoying dystopian tales is yoooge. (My brain also contains a similarly-sized space for British horror movies, but that’s a topic for another article.)
Why Do We Love Dystopian Books?
If you’re reading this, you probably like dystopian stories too, but why?
I think we like them because we tend to see the “real” world we currently inhabit as a blurry photograph. Silver-tongued politicians can make a host of reprehensible ideas seem palatable. We find ourselves sliding down various slippery slopes.
Dystopian works like Orwell’s 1984 take the blurriness of the world and throw aspects of it into sharp relief. Dystopian writers help us to more easily see the negative effects of our governmental and policy choices. Opting for strongmen in the interest of short-term security is a waypoint on the path to totalitarianism. The dehumanization and theft of personal freedoms of one group imperil us all. Carelessness with our environment leads to famine, drought, and chaos. These are all common lessons in the dystopian works of the 20th and 21st Centuries. If only we learned them.
Why Learn Lessons from Dystopian Books?
Stories are important to our lives because they help us make sense of the world (in addition to entertaining us), as pointed out by Lisa Cron in Wired for Story and Story Genius. By living vicariously through story characters, we imagine ourselves in complex situations. That helps us humans, aspiring overachievers that we are, build empathy and learn problem-solving skills through mentally navigating complex situations, however unrealistic.
Theoretically, reading dystopian literature could help us prevent dystopian governments by showing us the signs along the way to doom. Dystopian literature is meant to serve up warnings, not prophecies. That’s why there must be a sort of fantastical element about them; otherwise, they become depressingly grim depictions of current or imminent reality. So, the more unreal aspects of Oceania, Gilead, and Snake Plissken’s Los Angeles aren’t meant to predict the future exactly, but to intrigue us, provoking thought experiments and warning us of the negative consequences of our actions that we might not otherwise consider.
Have Dystopian Books Made a Difference?
So did books like 1984 and Brave New World help us avoid undesirable situations like totalitarian governments and eugenics? Obviously not completely, but they may have delayed them a bit by raising awareness.
I also believe that these classic dystopian works and their contemporary counterparts—even the cozy ones—continue to make a difference, at least partially staving off terrible governments and policies by terrifying us with their potential repercussions. After all, it would be difficult to imagine someone who is an avid reader of climate change dystopian works would support policies that continue to trash our environment.
Dystopian literature forces essential issues to the forefront of our collective consciousness. They confront us with future realities if we maintain our current course. And when enough of us read and write dystopian stories, we might avoid that bleak future altogether.
