Utopias, the descriptions of fictitious perfect societies, owe their name to Thomas More's Utopia (1516), a title of Greek origin that literally means nowhere. Before and after More's work there have been many other utopias, each one to the liking of its author, for the question of the perfect society gives a lot of play to the imagination. Examples include Plato's Republic, Tomasso Campanella's The City of the Sun (1602), Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888, see this post), William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890), James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933), or Aldous Huxley's Island (1962).
In contrast to utopias, dystopias describe imperfect societies that allow their author to criticize the society to which he belongs, or to predict future trends that are undesirable or frankly horrible. Dystopias are more modern than utopias: they date back to the latter part of the 19th century, have proliferated during the 20th century (especially after the global discouragement resulting from the First World War and the communist revolution in Russia), and continue to be published in the 21st century. The list that I am going to offer here is by no means exhaustive. The selection criterion is the fact that I have read them all.
- Erewhon by Samuel Butler (1872): Its title
comes from the English word “nowhere”, which means the same as Utopia,
only Butler has spelled it backwards, which means that it is the opposite
of a utopia (the word dystopia, which makes use of the
Greek prefix dys = bad, did not yet exist). Butler places it
in an unidentified British colony resembling New Zealand, and uses the
novel to criticize the English society of his time.
- Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson (1907): Along with A Canticle for Leibowitz, the book I spoke about in the previous post, this is one of the best dystopias by Catholic writers.
- We by Yevgueni Zamyatin (1921) criticizes
a society vaguely similar to that of the Soviet Union, extrapolating it
towards a suffocating future.
- Brave New World by Aldous
Huxley (1932): Influenced by the previous one, it extrapolates science,
predicting important advances in the genetic manipulation of embryos and
artificial gestation, the tools of a “benevolent” dictatorial government
that uses eugenics to split society in several classes genetically and
intellectually different, and which uses sex and drugs to keep the people
subdued and easily manipulated. Nonconformists are permanently banished to
an island. I talked about this dystopia in another
post.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George
Orwell (1948): Also influenced by We, it criticizes Soviet
society and extrapolates it to a world domination that does not exclude
war, whose leaders use lies and fear to control society, and brainwashing
to reshape and reeducate nonconformists.
- One (or Escape
to Nowhere) by David Karp (1953): Chilling description of
brainwashing and the destruction and reconstruction of a human being by an
evil, amoral character, devoid of feelings. A good illustration of the abolition of man, with a slightly optimistic
ending.
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953): A
future society where political correctness has reached such an extreme
that all books are banned because, in the words of one character, any book
whatever will always offend some minority. Only comic strips are allowed
to be read and readers of books are persecuted.
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony
Burgess (1962): In a future society, juvenile delinquency is out of
control. One young criminal is successfully subjected to a mental
manipulation and rehabilitation program, but the effects of the treatment
disappear later and the protagonist reverts to a state of orgiastic
violence, although in the end he matures and improves his behavior.
- Do androids dream of electric sheep?
by Philip K. Dick (1968): In a future society, intelligent androids
(replicants) are almost indistinguishable from humans. The government
keeps them segregated so that they won't mix with humans. To achieve this,
a new profession appears: destroyers of replicants who try to pass
themselves off as humans. As I said in another
post, Blade Runner, the
movie based on this novel, is much better than the novel.
- I am Margaret by Corinna Turner (2014): In
the future, the culture of death has spread in the European Union and
Great Britain. Young people who fail an exam are segregated to use their
organs for transplants. Catholics are persecuted, must go underground, and
are executed through live quartering, just as the English did to punish treason in the days
of the Tudors.
In a chapter of my book The Fifth Level of Evolution, I make a more
complete analysis of utopias and dystopias, and at the end I say the following:
Dystopias are horrible, but they have a power of
conviction, a probability, far superior to their opponents… Any society that
wishes to perpetuate itself indefinitely at all costs must resort to inhuman
and dehumanizing control methods. Any society, made of free, selfish men, inclined to evil, must be unstable by
nature, unless its members are forced to adopt a permanently conformist
attitude. This is what C.S. Lewis calls
The abolition of man.
Which dystopia do I consider most likely?
Of the two best known, Brave New World and Nineteen
Eighty-Four, it is often said that we are getting closer, and in many
ways this is true. But I prefer to remember what Jesus Christ said about this: The gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church
(Mt. 16:18). Neither utopias nor dystopias will prevail, because man is free
and can fall in sin and be redeemed.
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