Dystopian vs. Utopian fiction?

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
The real trick is getting them to out themselves before they get into positions of power. Or, the other risk, which is that already established leadership will essentially switch sides. This is mostly what happened in the sci-fi and anime cons that I'm aware of - leadership basically just fell for the old "sci-fi has always been progressive" line, or otherwise bought into what the regressive left is selling.

Science fiction has always had progressive elements in the sense that science fiction is heavily utopian and a utopia will generally reflect the authors' idea of what an ideal future society would look like. Conversely, dystopian science fiction still reflects the authors' viewpoint.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Science fiction has always had progressive elements in the sense that science fiction is heavily utopian and a utopia will generally reflect the authors' idea of what an ideal future society would look like. Conversely, dystopian science fiction still reflects the authors' viewpoint.

I'm curious as to what it is about sci-fi you think has been utopian over the decades. I read a lot in the genre, but by no means all of it, and I can't think of any major sci-fi series that came up 'Utopian' until Star Trek The Next Generation hit.

The Time Machine was dystopian, a Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was closer to dystopian than utopian, as was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Dune is dystopian, original Star Wars and the original Star Trek are either neutral or more dystopian than utopian, various forms of pulp sci-fi were much more 'High adventure!' than Utopian or dystopian, Neuromancer famously started Cyberpunk as a thing...

Starship Troopers certainly wasn't, though I'm not particularly familiar with Heinlein's other works, and the Michael Chrichton works that I've read certainly weren't utopian. Ender's Game was also much more dystopian than utopian.

Maybe Asimov's work would be considered such? I've only read one or two of his books, and that was around the edges of society, so I couldn't say how the setting as a whole went.

This isn't intended as a 'gotcha' question or anything, I'm just genuinely having a hard time thinking of major sci-fi pieces before TNG that could be considered utopian. It's possible this is just because of what I've read and haven't read.

I put particular emphasis on Dune, as I see it as the closest thing to a 'progenitor' of modern sci-fi in a similar (though much less intensely so) manner to how The Lord of the Rings is the progenitor of modern fantasy.

TNG was certainly utopian, but I can't really think of much past that.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
I seem to recall someone posting a video here somewhere which describes how communists basically took over sci-fi starting in like the 1930s.

In any case, my usual response to the claim sci-fi has always been progressive is to point out that it had a different meaning back then, because as left-leaning as, for example, TNG was, it still made a point of engaging the viewer and making them think and creating nuanced characters and situations, where modern "progressive" writing uses nothing but one-dimensional characters with writing that lacks any nuance as it lays out what the correct way of thinking is.
 

The Immortal Watch Dog

Well-known member
Hetman
Maybe Asimov's work would be considered such? I've only read one or two of his books, and that was around the edges of society, so I couldn't say how the setting as a whole went.

The guy's most famous work was about a bunch of big brained nibba memes given flesh deciding that, instead of trying to proactively stop a cosmic dark age, that they would instead pool all their knowledge in one place and let the universe go to hell in a hand basket so that they and their descendants and the subtle actions they took to build up momentum would function as a sort of NWO guiding Galactic civilization "Back to the right path" and "minimizing the dark age" "shaving off centuries" etc.


Now maybe I'm in the minority but I've always seen the implications of that as fucking horrifying...But maybe that's just me.

But the Foundation saga was hardly Utopian.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
The guy's most famous work was about a bunch of big brained nibba memes given flesh deciding that, instead of trying to proactively stop a cosmic dark age, that they would instead pool all their knowledge in one place and let the universe go to hell in a hand basket so that they and their descendants and the subtle actions they took to build up momentum would function as a sort of NWO guiding Galactic civilization "Back to the right path" and "minimizing the dark age" "shaving off centuries" etc.


Now maybe I'm in the minority but I've always seen the implications of that as fucking horrifying...But maybe that's just me.

But the Foundation saga was hardly Utopian.


The foundation Saga was in many ways supposed to be at least particially tragic, its central premise is that there are cycles in himan civilization and that there are limits to our agency when dealing with them, and that some times the best you can do is try to save what you can and start again.
 

Laskar

Would you kindly?
Founder
Maybe Asimov's work would be considered such? I've only read one or two of his books, and that was around the edges of society, so I couldn't say how the setting as a whole went.
Lol, no. Asimov was way too obsessed with overpopulation and other looming disasters to write a utopia. At best, he played around with futures where Humanity was happy because our benign robot overlords were quietly tending our garden, driven by the Zeroth Law of Robotics, but it's not a future that you or I would consider utopian.

Then again, since we don't believe in human perfection, maybe Asimov's stories count as utopian by his own criteria? Would match with what I've read of his nonfiction.

The other grandmaster of science fiction is Arthur C. Clarke, and the only utopian fiction he wrote was 3001. Which sucked. Seriously. That was peak "Old Man Clarke rants at clouds".

Maybe a better criteria would be pessimism/optimism, rather than dystopian/utopian fiction? You can have an optimistic dystopia, in that things suck but people are capable of making it better. You can also have a pessimistic utopia, in that the whole reason why the story is written is so that the author can rant about how flawed and evil human beings are.
 

Ash's Boomstick

Well-known member
Having read the vast majority of Heinleins work in my time, there is little to anything that approaches a Utopian state in his novels or short stories. In fact I'd go so far as to say that he kept the commercialism of his own era and the unions/guilds as a major part of the future of his stories. There were a few dystopias, much like a number of HG Wells, Jules Verne, Asimov and Clarke wrote in their careers but not as many as you would expect given the number of novels he wrote.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Dune is dystopian
I put particular emphasis on Dune, as I see it as the closest thing to a 'progenitor' of modern sci-fi in a similar (though much less intensely so) manner to how The Lord of the Rings is the progenitor of modern fantasy.
The foundation Saga was in many ways supposed to be at least particially tragic, its central premise is that there are cycles in himan civilization and that there are limits to our agency when dealing with them, and that some times the best you can do is try to save what you can and start again.
My thesis is that The Foundation and Dune are both fundamental to modern sci-fi, and that this is in part because they are both neither utopian nor dystopian. The author's viewpoint colours in the way everything is presented, of course, but they are both in many ways just... "historically real".

The funny thing is that they describe the same thing, but with opposite evaluations. Asimov tells us that the far future willin many ways reject the tropes of modernity and return to more traditional power structures; so does Herbert. Asimov worries about demographic realities; so does Herbert. Asimov depicts the effect of prescience on human civilisation; so does Herbert. Asimov converns himself with the prospect of a united Empire falling, and humanity going into an age of division; so does Herbert. Asimov depicts a unique individual who doesn't fit into the grand plan of those who peer into the future, and puts that plan at risk; so does Herbert.

The key difference is this: Asimov sees the dark age as a bad thing, and sees it as a noble aim to shorten it. Herbert sees unity as a bad thing, and sees division (the Scattering) as the only way to save humanity from terminal stagnation. Which is why the Mule is an obstacle, whereas the Kwisatz Haderach is an indispensable necessity.

Regardless of these authorial views and evaluations, both Asimov and Herbert view things with a sharp eye. Their own opinions are evident, but they don't get in the way of the world-building. Either by accident or design, both men prioritise the story and the setting over what we now call "messaging".

Most utopian and dystopian sci-fi, by contrast, is basically just a huge load of messaging. The author expresses blatant hopes and fantasies, or expresses blatant fears and anxieties. Typically, such works tell us little about history or the future. They only tell us things about the author and/or the author's generation. Which is also they such fiction very often becomes extremely dated, and very rapidly. (The few stand-out works of utopian and dystopian fiction that are less dated, one will note, invariably opt to deal with universal themes. And even then, elements that are soon very dated always creep in.)

In the end, I agree with @ShadowArxxy that "a utopia will generally reflect the authors' idea of what an ideal future society would look like. Conversely, dystopian science fiction still reflects the authors' viewpoint." That's accurate. However, this doesn't automatically tie back to "science fiction has always had progressive elements in the sense that science fiction is heavily utopian". Because it's not just progressives who are capable of writing utopias.

After all, just read The Secret of the League (1907). That's often mis-identified as "dystopian", because to progressives, it reads like a dystopia. It wasn't written to be a dystopia. It was reactionary wish-fulfillment. A book in which a right-wing conspiracy deliberately causes social strife so that enough support arises to overthrow the left-wing government and institute a right-wing dictatorship. No wonder progressives all think it's a dystopia, right? But the author expressly views the events of the book as desirable. The conspirators are the heroes, and are depicted as saving the country.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
The guy's most famous work was about a bunch of big brained nibba memes given flesh deciding that, instead of trying to proactively stop a cosmic dark age, that they would instead pool all their knowledge in one place and let the universe go to hell in a hand basket so that they and their descendants and the subtle actions they took to build up momentum would function as a sort of NWO guiding Galactic civilization "Back to the right path" and "minimizing the dark age" "shaving off centuries" etc.


Now maybe I'm in the minority but I've always seen the implications of that as fucking horrifying...But maybe that's just me.

But the Foundation saga was hardly Utopian.
For a subversion of the whole Foundation concept, whether it was deliberately written as one or otherwise, try The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper.

A few generations ago, the planet Poictesme was a major manufacturing depot and supply stockpile in a space war, which, once the war ended, left it economically unsustainable since there was no market for the existing military equipment everywhere, let alone for manufacturing more of it. The problem was further exuberated by Merlin, the titular Cosmic Computer. Merlin was an Artificial Superintelligence, capable of planning and predicting military strategies, inventing and optimizing technologies and in general, doing anything a human genius could do, but better. Originally built as a superweapon to win the war, which it did, Merlin was mysteriously abandoned by its creators in the galactic goverment military shortly after the war's end and its location lost.

This makes developing anything on Poictesme seemingly pointless, since if anyone ever finds Merlin, they'd be able to take its advice to do whatever you did better and you'd have lost whatever money you spent on making your version.

Enter our protagonist, a con artist with the perfect scheme to revitalize Poictesme's economy and make himself obscenely rich in the process. He's going to pretend to have a clue where Merlin is and start a stock boom based around his company intended to exploit Merlin and resources to get Merlin repaired. Everything would've gone perfectly if Merlin had just stayed lost and he didn't discover why its creators had abandoned it.

Merlin had predicted the galaxywide collapse of civilization and essentially recreated Poictesme's problems on a larger scale as all of the galactic government's most powerful who'd heard the prophecy stopped trying to build or maintain anything as pointless since it'd just get destroyed anyway in the collapse and started squirreling away resources to maintain their own power in the aftermath.
 

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