Countup from Dystopia

Contra Naomi Klein... dystopian fiction was popular in the 1970s, too.

This is rather amusing, in its way:

Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign.

...because Naomi Klein apparently has no idea whatsoever that the 1970s was probably the Golden Age of Dystopian fiction, Eco-collapse edition.  Including, I might add, a lot of overconfident predictions about global warming that never actually happened.  In fact, pretty much none of the things that were worried about then - overpopulation, choking pollution, the loss of every species less hardy than the cockroach, nuclear war, mass famine, running out of oil, running out of water, running out of air, and of course the obligatory dictatorships made up of the authors' least favorite American social groups - didn't actually happen, either.  

Shoot, even the Soviet Union fell down and went boom just as soon as Ronald Reagan kicked it in the groin.

And so disaster will probably be averted here, too. Oh, maybe it won't. Maybe we really are doomed this time. But we've been doomed before; and it's surprising that Naomi Klein won't at least nod to the past confident assertions of disaster.  Although it should not surprise me that anyone with as high an opinion of Margaret Atwood - a woman who was spectactularly wrong in predicting future history in The Handmaid's Tale - might be somewhat deficient in other aspects of this particular literary genre.

On the other hand, Ms. Klein got me to post something here after two years! So, go her.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

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.

It Can't Happen Here.

Name: It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis.

Type: Book.

Written in: 1935

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.

The Sheep Look Up.

Full link here.

Name: The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner.  E-book pdf here.

Type: Book

Written in: 1972

Make Room! Make Room!

Full link.

Name: Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison

Type: Book

Written in: 1966