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I’m a big science fiction fan, and have always been interested in people’s ideas of utopias and dystopia. They’re two sides of the same coin: the best and worst that humans are capable of creating, presented as a commentary on the here and now. What qualifies as best and worst has meant different things in different eras. Here are some that I’m familiar with.
Utopias:
Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1915. Gilman imagines an all-female world with no violence, where an idealized motherhood is the basis of all values. Unusually for utopian fiction, there’s no sexuality or romantic love. There’s an interesting moment when a male visitor explains abortion to a Herland woman who’s utterly aghast.
The End of This Day’s Business, Katharine Burdakin, 1935. The story is set in a peaceful matriarchy where men are kept uneducated, deemed capable only of physical labor and amusement for women. The story is much less dynamic than her Swastika night (see below), as the only obstacle here is widespread cultural stagnation. The heroine commits the one remaining capital crime by teaching men about a history when they held power.
Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy, 1976. People live in peaceful, mostly-autonomous villages with most property shared. Technology is still valued, but used in ways that don’t destroy the earth. Food, housing, health care and productive work are taken-for-granted human rights. Babies all come from test tubes, in every ethnic mix, and people volunteer to be parents (all called “mothers”) in groups of three. Friends who aren’t lovers are preferred for co-parenting, as it helps keep children out of their parents’ relationship dramas. Part of this utopia’s appeal is that it’s flawed enough to seem achievable: violent crime is rare, but it still happens. A first offense brings a penalty that’s negotiated with the victim and family, plus a brand on the face. For a second violent offense, the death penalty. But we also see a one-time offender who’s been fully integrated back into society.
The same book gives a quick glimpse of another possible future, a dystopia where a few “richies” own everything, and the rest of humanity is kept drugged and overworked on a burned-out earth, while surgically-altered women are kept as sex slaves for the richies. For reasons that take a whole book to explain, the present-day heroine figures the direction is up to her.
The Fifth Sacred Thing, Starhawk, 1993. Similar in some ways to Piercy’s vision, this utopia is built on economic justice and ecology. Earth-centered Paganism is the norm, and polyamory is common. When the community (set in San Francisco, where else?) is attacked by a Fundamentalist army from Los Angeles, the people have to figure out how to defend themselves without becoming indistinguishable from their enemy, finally realizing that the key lies in the humanity of the soldiers themselves.
Dystopias:
The Iron Heel, Jack London, 1908. An early example of the hyper-capitalist dystopia where corporations replace government. The story is narrated by Avis, a wealthy young woman who falls in love with the socialist hero. Surprisingly, although London could write a wolf’s point of view with conviction, he had more trouble writing a woman. Avis’s burbling about her beloved’s “bulging muscles” and “brilliant wit” starts to get tiresome. I’m told the hero is named for one of London’s relatives, but somehow the name Ernest Everhard gives me the giggles. The story is framed as a manuscript found centuries later, with commentary added. We learn that the Iron Heel captured and executed Ernest and Avis — but in time it was brought down, and a new society arose, called the Brotherhood of Man.
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1931. On the surface, this one almost looks like a utopia: the people live in comfortable prosperity, enjoy their jobs, and have lots of sex with no worries about pregnancy. But the heart of this society is state control: people are programmed like robots from birth, with their individuality squeezed out as much as possible. The religious ideal is Henry Ford, creator of the assembly line: now this principle is applied to humans as well as cars.
Swastika Night, Katharine Burdakin, 1937. Written when the Nazis were on the rise, this book imagines a world 700 years after their victory. They’ve destroyed all records of life before Nazism, and technology has stalled. The Jews have all been killed, and since Nazis need an enemy, it’s now Christians. The dominant religion claims that Hitler was a literal God. Women have been reduced to something like livestock, used for breeding only, and the ideal man is the perfect soldier (and gay, tolerating women only for conception).
1984, George Orwell, 1949. The dystopia that defined the genre. While there’s poverty, constant surveillance, and arbitrary arrest and torture, the most powerful aspect of this dystopia is the control of information. The Ministry of Truth can change the past or make a person disappear. When the enemy switches from Eurasia to Eastasia, we’re told with utter conviction that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Cynically ironic names are accepted without so much as a raised eyebrow: the Ministry of Peace (deals with war), slogans like “Freedom is Slavery” (what?), or the No Child Left Behind Act (wait, that wasn’t Orwell, that was someone else). When even that much control of language isn’t enough, the Party creates Newspeak, a language that literally cannot express forbidden thoughts.
Logan’s Run, William Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, 1967. With limited resources, a future civilization executes people when they reach age 21 (30 in the movie and TV series), while indoctrinating them to believe they are being reborn. The hero is a “sandman,” trained to chase down and kill those who flee — until his turn comes.
Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula K. LeGuin, 1973. This is another one that looks like a utopia at first, filled with prosperous, happy people. But there’s a catch: for unexplained reasons, all their happiness depends on one child being imprisoned for a lifetime of abuse. Some people of Omelas refuse this exploitation and walk away. Back when we had signature lines, I recalls that one kossack’s sig was: “I’m not leaving Omelas without that kid!”
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1985. The all-too-plausible story of the US being taken over by right-wing Christian Dominionists. In Gilead, Biblical teachings about greed and violence are forgotten, while sex is rigidly controlled — at least for women. Women who are deemed sinful (like those who’ve remarried after divorce) are forced to live as breeding slaves (“handmaids” ) for powerful men. As with The Iron Heel, we get an epilogue promising that this too shall pass. The sequel, The Testaments (2020), imagines the beginning of Gilead’s end — with the complicity of one of the first book’s scariest villains.
Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Octavia E. Butler, 1995 & 1998. While many dystopias imagine an all-powerful state, Sower gives us the opposite: an America dissolving into Somalia-like chaos. Talents picks up the story some years later, when a Christian Taliban swoops in to take over. As in most of her work, Butler grapples with the legacy of slavery. She sugarcoats nothing: the violence, backbreaking work, rape, deprivation, breakup of families, and the endless humiliations — all wrapped up in pious platitudes of God and country. The scariest part is the demagogue who’s swept into power with a familiar campaign slogan: “Make America Great Again.”
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, 2008. Dystopias deal with the salient issues of the era when they’re created. The Iron Heel was about the robber barons, 1984 about the Soviet Union, and The Handmaid’s Tale about the religious right. The Hunger Games brings us back around to the robber barons...and “reality” television. Teenagers are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of the wealthy.
And a bit of both…..
I wish I could remember the titles, but there were three vignettes, I think by Margaret Atwood (or Marge Piercy?), in a long-ago issue of Ms. Magazine. The first, a utopia of sorts, had humans agreeing to end war, but worrying about how to channel men’s competitive instincts. Someone pointed out how male birds will show off their feathers for potential mates. The idea took hold, and war was replaced by pageants where men strutted around in uniforms with pretty medals.
The last vignette was a dystopia with a burned-out earth, where there’s only one way to keep the population from starving. But don’t worry, there’s nothing you’d recognize, like a finger or anything. I’m working from memory, but the ending line summed up the point of dystopic fiction, something like this:
You don’t like this future? Put it back, then. Choose another.