"The 10 Most Important Dystopian Books and Films of All Time" Topic
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Tango01  | 20 May 2014 9:30 p.m. PST |
"As far as we know, the word "dystopia" was first uttered back in 1868. That's when philosopher John Stuart Mill (piggybacking off his mentor Jeremy Bentham, who coined the word cackotopia for the same concept 50 years prior) used it in a speech ripping into the British government for its policies regarding Irish land. Now, 146 years, two world wars, thousands of texts, and countless technological advancements later, dystopia is looking pretty good for its age. It's emerged from the larger pool of speculative fiction to be granted its own, if unofficial, subgenre, and the oft-cited "Dystopian YA fiction" trend has generated billions of dollars in recent years. But it hasn't always held such status in the literary landscape. While the novel Brave New World has proven iconic over time, many science fiction writers at the time condemned Aldous Huxley's criticism of pharmaceutical culture as puritanical—even H.G. Wells called it "a treason to science." (Though that reaction might've been helped along by the fact that the novel was explicitly meant to parody some of Wells' previous work.) It's still a subset of a subset today (speculative fiction > science fiction > dystopia), but it's also a buzzword that's thrown around in conversations about tech, privacy, net neutrality, climate change, politics, and just about any other hot-button topic. That said, with its popularity at an all-time high, instances of people misusing the term "dystopian" are way up, too…"
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| Paul B | 21 May 2014 5:41 a.m. PST |
I would have included "The Space Merchants" by Pohl and Kornbluth, and the latter's "Marching Morons". |
| jpattern2 | 21 May 2014 9:33 a.m. PST |
It's a pretty typically hyperbolic Wired list.
Good as District 9 is, I'd hardly rate is as one of the ten best dystopian movies, let alone books and movies.
For example, you can trace the Mad Max/Road Warrior pedigree in literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of short stories, books, movies, RPGs, video/computer games, and wargames throughout the '80s, right up to today.
And how do you talk about dystopias without even mentioning Harlan Ellison's contributions? |
| elsyrsyn | 21 May 2014 10:02 a.m. PST |
I'm not sure "I, Robot" belongs in that list at all, and I'd probably have put in "A Canticle for Leibowitz." Doug |
 javelin98 | 21 May 2014 10:49 a.m. PST |
Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" surely belongs on that list under more than one of the categories! |
| Rapier Miniatures | 23 May 2014 10:08 a.m. PST |
Hmmm as a dystopia list it fails, District 9 and I Robot are not Dystopias but straight Sci-Fi, Brave New World is a Utopia, P K Dick is a catergory all of his own, and the film Blade Runner is much more Dystopian than the story it is based upon. Missing are the films, Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes and Rollerball. |
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goes beyond the straight line.