This is a great list. I’ll be adding a few to my TBR pile. I don’t often seek out dystopian lit, somehow it finds me, often at *just the right time* A few years back I had an extended stay in Taipei (It’s a great city, very friendly and clean) I found an English copy of Stanislaw Lem’s “Futurological Congress” and devoured it while surrounded by a language I don’t speak and a culture that’s teetering on the edge of being western and forward while still pulled by the order and history of the Chinese ancestry. It made Lem’s surreal world all the more poignant.
I'd not heard of "Futurological Congress" before - one for my reading list! I'm with you - I now instinctively shy away from dystopian tales but then when I do get wrapped up in one, it's at a time and place where that context really fulfills something in me.
I think there are many reasons why dystopian fiction is so appealing (at least it's for me). When I read dystopian science fiction (or cyberpunk or whatever), I feel like I'm right in the middle of the struggle. It's like training for me. We live in a world where we're constantly making apocalyptic assumptions. We see the storm, but we don't see the ray of sunshine.
Sorry, I think I got a bit lost. BTW I really enjoyed your article. It's good food for thoughts.
Oo the idea of training is a good one! That fits right in for me with why I love speculative fiction - not necessarily a future prediction but exploration of worlds that could yet come to be. Do you have favourite dystopias? Thats a bit of a weird sentence…”favourite dystopias”
Yeah! I have some "favorite dystopias" (:-D). I like ones that are based on the advent of the technological singularity—that is, machines taking over, AI becoming conscious, sentient intersections of artificial, biological and computer, and so. I'm not as into the political ones. You mentioned Orwell's 1984, which is a great novel, but I like scifi dystopian narratives by Philip Dick better.
Oh I read 'Ubik' recently and that was a wild ride! I think about it every time I open my front door. For free. I loved the conglomerate of self-aware capitalist technologies in that world - there's a quality in written technological scifi that I find is sometimes lost on screen, which is the multiplicity of technologies and uneven levels of technological advancement. Yes, there are multiple device/robot/door manufacturers. And yes there are older models which have some friction with the latest updates - and some people are still using hardware from a generation ago...I had this debate with my co-writer on our speculative fiction anthology about whether for simplicity we should use the same name and branding identity of a tech company for multiple different products. "No", I argued, "this is a market-driven world still and there is diversity and competition in the speculative-robot-manufacturing market." I won that argument.
Well, Ubik is hard. I read it a long time ago and I was too young to really understand it, I'll have to read it again. Have you tried A Scanner Darkly or the VALIS trilogy? Well, Valis blew my mind. It's very challenging, but I loved it! What about TV shows? Any dystopian ones you like?
Is it cheating to say 'The Last of Us'? I haven't played the game, although I've watched play-throughs online. I did really enjoy the TV series, thought it was wonderfully performed. And no I haven't read A Scanner Darkly or VALIS - will get onto those and report back!
I played the first episode of TLoU and started the second one, but gave up. I've never seen the show, but if you say it's worth it I'll take a look. Okay go for VALIS and Scanner, but don't hate me after! ;-)
This is a great list. I’ll be adding a few to my TBR pile. I don’t often seek out dystopian lit, somehow it finds me, often at *just the right time* A few years back I had an extended stay in Taipei (It’s a great city, very friendly and clean) I found an English copy of Stanislaw Lem’s “Futurological Congress” and devoured it while surrounded by a language I don’t speak and a culture that’s teetering on the edge of being western and forward while still pulled by the order and history of the Chinese ancestry. It made Lem’s surreal world all the more poignant.
I'd not heard of "Futurological Congress" before - one for my reading list! I'm with you - I now instinctively shy away from dystopian tales but then when I do get wrapped up in one, it's at a time and place where that context really fulfills something in me.
I think there are many reasons why dystopian fiction is so appealing (at least it's for me). When I read dystopian science fiction (or cyberpunk or whatever), I feel like I'm right in the middle of the struggle. It's like training for me. We live in a world where we're constantly making apocalyptic assumptions. We see the storm, but we don't see the ray of sunshine.
Sorry, I think I got a bit lost. BTW I really enjoyed your article. It's good food for thoughts.
Oo the idea of training is a good one! That fits right in for me with why I love speculative fiction - not necessarily a future prediction but exploration of worlds that could yet come to be. Do you have favourite dystopias? Thats a bit of a weird sentence…”favourite dystopias”
Yeah! I have some "favorite dystopias" (:-D). I like ones that are based on the advent of the technological singularity—that is, machines taking over, AI becoming conscious, sentient intersections of artificial, biological and computer, and so. I'm not as into the political ones. You mentioned Orwell's 1984, which is a great novel, but I like scifi dystopian narratives by Philip Dick better.
Oh I read 'Ubik' recently and that was a wild ride! I think about it every time I open my front door. For free. I loved the conglomerate of self-aware capitalist technologies in that world - there's a quality in written technological scifi that I find is sometimes lost on screen, which is the multiplicity of technologies and uneven levels of technological advancement. Yes, there are multiple device/robot/door manufacturers. And yes there are older models which have some friction with the latest updates - and some people are still using hardware from a generation ago...I had this debate with my co-writer on our speculative fiction anthology about whether for simplicity we should use the same name and branding identity of a tech company for multiple different products. "No", I argued, "this is a market-driven world still and there is diversity and competition in the speculative-robot-manufacturing market." I won that argument.
Well, Ubik is hard. I read it a long time ago and I was too young to really understand it, I'll have to read it again. Have you tried A Scanner Darkly or the VALIS trilogy? Well, Valis blew my mind. It's very challenging, but I loved it! What about TV shows? Any dystopian ones you like?
Is it cheating to say 'The Last of Us'? I haven't played the game, although I've watched play-throughs online. I did really enjoy the TV series, thought it was wonderfully performed. And no I haven't read A Scanner Darkly or VALIS - will get onto those and report back!
Yeah, quite cheating! Kidding of course. :-P
I played the first episode of TLoU and started the second one, but gave up. I've never seen the show, but if you say it's worth it I'll take a look. Okay go for VALIS and Scanner, but don't hate me after! ;-)
💧 🔪!