Sorry, folks: I did have one to go over - Branch Point by Mona Clee (alt-history written by somebody who was perhaps a little too upset over what happened to Bill Clinton)... but then I realized that the 'why it's relevant' would have been 'because it made Moe waste two bucks at the used book store over a decade ago.' That probably isn't enough.
So let me just cheat and note something (SPOILERS):
11/21/2011
10/17/2011
09/19/2011
Car Wars
Name: Car Wars, by Steve Jackson Games
Type: Board/Roleplaying Game (armored and armed car warfare on the dystopian highways of a future America).
Written in: 1980, to begin with; there have been multiple supplements since. 1996 is the publication date of the latest roleplaying supplement (GURPS Autoduel).
Set in: 2030-2046; I'm doing this one because according to the official timeline Rounds One and Two of Everything Turns To Crap were supposed to have happened by now.
Why it's a dystopia: For our purposes? Well, at this point the country's supposed to have lost Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana in a civil war; legalized blood sports; watched the environment go Full Metal Ehrlich; and suffered through a decade of domestic terrorism. And this is the part of the timeline that the future inhabitants are going to be nostalgic about.
Why it's significant: Honestly? Much as I love this game - and I do, I do - I'm doing it because it's a handy referent to peak oil in popular culture.
What happened? Well, the environmental estimates were as accurate as they always were - for some reason, radical Greenies really do tend to forget that rich people breathe oxygen, drink water, and metabolize organic material, too - but it's the peak oil thing that is probably the tell, here.
08/30/2011
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Name: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell
Type: Book
Written in: 1949
Set in: ...1984.
Why it's a dystopia: The world is broken up into three super-dictatorships, two of which are always at war with the third; everybody is spying on everybody else, everybody lives in more or less abject poverty, and eventually the secret police comes, takes you away, tortures you until you break, and then shoots you. Also, you can't turn off your television set. Everything in that first sentence may or may not be true, by the way, even in the context of the book.
Why it's significant: You probably read this book in high school. Also, every politically-motivated online idiot on the Left will eventually reference this book while whining about whatever the Right's done, or thought to have done, or is incorrectly alleged to have done this week (don't smirk; there's a similar problem on the Right with regard to Atlas Shrugged). Nineteen Eighty-Four has also more or less interjected itself into our popular culture, and to a certain extent our language. All in all, it's probably the most mainstream piece of masochism porn in Western literature.
08/25/2011
08/10/2011
The Handmaid's Tale.
Name: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.
Type: Book
Written in: 1985
Set in: At a guess, probably right about now. I'm kind of pushing it - 2015 might be a safer date - but what the heck. Definitely the coup should have happened already.
Why it's a dystopia: Extreme - extreme - gender repression, coupled with all the rigorously accurate and scientific depiction of ecological/nuclear disaster that we've come to expect from liberal arts majors. A good deal of racism, also (including a soupcon of the usual petulance from the Left that modern Evangelical Christianity has found good, sound, Biblical reasons to avoid anti-Semitism like the plague). Oh, and there's like, heavy infertility and so forth (note the previous sneer about liberal arts majors*).
Why it's significant: It is widely rumored that (at least during the latter 80s/early 90s) proof of possession of this book be demonstrated by any individual seeking a bachelor's degree or higher in Women's Studies. It also got turned into a movie, which was also apparently required watching. And, to be fair, on a technical level it's fairly well-written.
08/04/2011
The Sheep Look Up.
08/03/2011
08/02/2011
Countup from Dystopia.
This is a bit of an experiment: it's a blog that will feature examples where folks got it flat-out wrong in predicting that things were going to go to Hell in a handbasket. I'm doing it for three reasons:
- It doesn't hurt to get this stuff on the record;
- I figure that I can flog some of the books/movies what have you via Amazon.com
;
- I feel like it.
The examples will range from the profound to the silly; essentially, whatever floats my boat. Also, not every case will be critical; I can think of some examples where the author was damned happy to be proven wrong.
