, more dystopian novels are being released than ever before. I love a good dystopian novel. Many years ago, I read The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood. Blew. My. Mind. I rushed out and immediately read George Orwell's 1984
and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
. These three novels cemented my love of the dystopian genre. And then, as things usually go in life, I forgot about the genre completely. There weren't a lot of books set in dystopian societies being released regularly and those that were weren't getting enough attention to show up on my radar. Since I started blogging, I've been reintroduced to dystopia through such amazing books as Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, The Hunger Games Trilogy
(obviously) and Matched by Ally Condie. Mind. Blown. Yet. Again.
Not just why do I like dystopia, but why does anyone? It's not exactly the most uplifting of genres. Of course, I also love horror and those aren't usually feel-good books either. For me, I think it's a natural progression from my love of horror. Horror is awesome, but many times it includes a supernatural element that negates any realism. With dystopia, it's all possible. And if done right, it feels likely. The scariness is in the chance, no matter how small, that this could be a glimpse at the not-to-distant future.
Do you love dystopia? Why? What are some of your favorite books in the genre? Any soon to be released books you can't wait to get your hands on?
27 Comments:
I have to admit I am not a huge fan of Dystopia. I did enjoy the Hunger Games (though I am still working on Mockingbird) but on a whole I like "happier" books LOL. That being said I do understand the pull of them and think most of them are done really well :)
I love dystopian literature an am looking forward to reading Wither by Lauren DeStefano as well as Awaken by Katie kacvinsky. Megan Crewe also has a book coming out in 2012, I believe, called The Way We Fall.
I love it! The action, the fight for life, the battle to be good in a world gone bad, the commentary...great question!
I love that its a new world and but I have noticed that there is always hope within the dytopian from birthmarked, matched, delirium..
I have noticed that I'm reading more of them too. There are some great choices out there now to choose from.
I adore dystopian and always have, all the way from reading The Giver back in middle school. I love the struggles in the genre and the hope for change.
I am love the warnings in the book and thinking about how easy it could be for OUR society to turn into the society in the book and the warning signs we need to look for.
The genre also tends to have very strong, well-developed characters who are smart, cunning, and brave. Great characters are so important to me, so it isn't surprising that i love the genre so much!
I really like dystopian literature especially if it is not science fiction (much harder to write) - I love the social commentary in those books.
http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
I think there are many and varied reason why we read dystopia. For me, my first introduction was Lois Lowry's The Giver. I hated it the first time around, but I read it again a few years later after I was more interested in government and personal rights, and I absolutely adored it. My original, beat up, paperback copy that I bought back in 1993 when I was twelve is still on my shelf and always will be. It really made me think about how lucky we are to have personal choice, and what a slippery slope it is into one extreme or another. In fact, I wrote an analysis of it using a feminist lense in grad school for my critical theory class.
I think we tend towards dystopian when we feel a sense of unease in our own lives. Since 2003, there has been a sense that there can always be war at any moment. Since 2008, the economy, and thus, our standard of living, has been precarious. Also, we can access information and new worldwide now, and we have much greater sense of how it is to live in other places - I think it makes us realize that many of us are very lucky, comparatively speaking, and we might fear having to take a hit on how we live. And fear makes people do crazy things, and dystopian literature shows the results of choices made in fear. I think on one level, we would love to have the stability that the people in these book have; on another, it's a cautionary tale on the radical steps people can take in times of discord. At the heart of these books, they are typically stories of finding oneself, questions what you know, and rebellion, and who doesn't love a good revolution? They remind that if we don't likes things, that we can be brave and change them.
I am looking forward to reading XVI by Julia Karr, Wither by Lauren DeStefano, and the Australian The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden.
-Linds, bibliophile brouhaha
I think we tend towards dystopian when we feel a sense of unease in our own lives. Since 2003, there has been a sense that there can always be war at any moment. Since 2008, the economy, and thus, our standard of living, has been precarious. Also, we can access information and new worldwide now, and we have much greater sense of how it is to live in other places - I think it makes us realize that many of us are very lucky, comparatively speaking, and we might fear having to take a hit on how we live. And fear makes people do crazy things, and dystopian literature shows the results of choices made in fear. I think on one level, we would love to have the stability that the people in these book have; on another, it's a cautionary tale on the radical steps people can take in times of discord. At the heart of these books, they are typically stories of finding oneself, questions what you know, and rebellion, and who doesn't love a good revolution? They remind that if we don't likes things, that we can be brave and change them.
I am looking forward to reading XVI by Julia Karr, Wither by Lauren DeStefano, and the Australian The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden.
I think a lot of people love dystopia for the same reason that they love horror - it offers catharsis. Things may suck in the here and now, but at least you're not in 1984, or Logan's Run, or The Hunger Games. And unlike horror, as you said, it could be considered realistic, or at least plausible...therefore giving you both a sense of relief at not being there, and also a sense that maybe you can do something to prevent a horrible future like that from happening.
Makes you glad for your present life, and hopeful that you can create a better future.
I love this genre. Probably my favorite right now. I love the Chaos Walking series, Birthmarked, Divergent (OMG!!), Delirium, Matched, the Uglies series, all of it!
Why do I love it? Because its so imaginative and fun to read. I love teaching classic dystopias and modern ones because it's an interesting lens through which we can observe our own world. Students are able to make connections between what's going on in our world today and what may take place in the future.
Love it!!
I think people also love dystopian novels because they crave a little escapism. Yeah, things *could* hypothetically turn out to be that bad, but sometimes it's not very likely. Still, it's entertaining and thrilling to read about young or not-so young people rebelling against society to defend human rights, freedom, love, and nature.
I've just finished to read Awakened by Katie Kacvinsky, which I liked and left me hungry for more, even though some elements in the novel sem to contradict the premise on which the whole dystopian theme is built, leaving me perplexed. I can't wait for Wither by Lauren Destefano to come out.
I think we read them because they scare us. Not openly the way Horror does, but subtly creeping into our minds and changing the way we think.
A lot of Dystopian takes one flaw in our society and magnifies it, emphasizes it and shows us where we might go if this remains unchecked.
And then, when we see elements of those books popping up in the news, like a Scientist who created a functional, working, artificial CELL in a test tube (Brave New World...!) or the replacement of the n'word in Huck Finn with Slave (M. Clifford's The Book).
It's unnerving when we see stories begin to come to life. But they are a fun house mirror reflection of our society. Scary, isn't it.
(And for the record, I've been a fan for years, much longer than The Hunger Games induced fad... ;) )
I love Dystopia...Is just amazing... I think is a genre where author and reader can let their imagnation go, I mean in normal fiction that´s possible too but in dystopia is just different, you can be scared about the future, sumerged in the suspense of the story, excited about what´s going to happen, I love that kind of feeling, of something that is possible, maybe, sometime...
I love the way it makes you think, because we can see the reflection of nowadays problems in that not so distant future. Just amazing, isnt it?
-Mariana S
http://smartgirls-read.blogspot.com/
I think a lot of people like dystopian novels because they enjoy the thrill of the "fight against the system" that goes on there. Most dystopian premises, after all, take a concept from our own lives and stretch and expand it into an extreme version (either in the future or in a separate world altogether). Seeing these elements in our own society, albeit to a lesser degree, is unsettling, and it gives us a connection to the main character and a reason to root for them.
I think you've also hit upon something in the horror aspect of it...it *is* disturbing, and yet in a subtler but perhaps more meaningful way than standard horror novels.
I love dystopia because of the new ideas the author brings us. They present a world that is almost like ours, but has changed in a way that could really happen to us, too.
It's great to see all these ideas about what the new world looks like and how people try to survive it.
Dystopia was something I recently discovered even existed after my editor told me the novel I'm currently working on most fit that genre. And here I was going for Steampunk when I started! I've always been more inclined to "end of the world" type movies, music, art and literature. You could say I am more morbid than most but it's a level of imagination I feel is most unexplored and has the greatest potential for something to become a masterpiece. I plan on finishing my current dystopia by the summer, perhaps I'll have you give me an early review.
I don't think I have any particularly strong feelings about the genre. When I read dystopian fiction I do tend to enjoy it (Handmaid's Tale isn't one my favourites, but Oryx and Crake was great and The year of the Flood blew my mind)
I think the fascination comes from seeing a world that is different from our own, but not so different that we can't see how it became like that. It makes us think, shit, if we don't get our acts together, that could be us in the next 50 years. I'm just getting into the genre, but so far I'm loving it. The two I'm most looking forward to this year are Delirium and Wither.
I'm not sure if this is technically Dystopia.... by Storm Thief by Chris Wooding certainly seems like it! Love his writing :)
It's interesting that you mentioned The Handmaid's Tale. One of my roommates was just telling me how much she loved that book the other night. Guess I'll have to check it out now, huh?
Have you ever read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin? It's largely considered the first dystopian novel and the inspiration for 1984 and A Brave New World. I prefer it to either. It's so overlooked, possibly because it was written in Russian, but the book is phenomenal, even in translation.
I guess it's a way of processing fears about the future and dissatisfaction wit the present in a safe, nondestructive way. I love watching zombie movies, and it's largely because of the little thrill I get at the idea of breaking everything down and reducing life to the bare essentials. I don't actually want to do it, but I like to think of it sometimes.
If you're looking for more, I really dug Unwind by Neal Susterman and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Also, I second We. I liked it more than 1984 or Brave New World too. It's less of a downer to read than 1984 and a bit more subtle I think than Brave New World.
The Year of the Flood is high on my TBR pile at the moment, as is Mockingjay.
I'd never read any dystopian novel until The Hunger Games and Matched and I loved them! Now I'm waiting for Delirium by Lauren Oliver and Divergent (I don't remember the author's name...).
I have loved dystopian novels ever since high school. I wrote my first real research paper about dystopian novels. I think one of the first ones I read was "A Canticle for Leibowitz" pretty crazy book, but it really sticks with you. I love all of Margaret Atwood's novels, especially "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood". I could go on and on about the genre. I guess my favorite thing about the genre is seeing how the author perceives our society and how they think it will change with time. Even the most subtle concepts within dystopian novels speak volumes about our society, what we value and where we are headed.
http://annalise-25bookchallenge.blogspot.com/
Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Is. INCREDIBLE.
I've read some of Dystopian lit (The first 3 Uglies books, the first of the Hunger Games, and 1984), and while I appreciated them I'm not a huge fan of the genre. That type of book tends to get my stomach twisting, and I prefer not to get sick from my reading. =)
I've read some Dystopia books and liked them, but I've found lately that they seem to be very repetitive. Also, they always are so hopeless! I think it's kind of boring me...but I'm very sure it will a popular genre for a while, specially because of the new movies.
What do you think about post-apocalyptic books? I think they will be pretty popular now that we are in 2012.
Post a Comment