Dystopian Sci-Fi refers to a mode of speculative fiction that take aspects of our contemporary world, linking to social/political/cultural contexts and explores the consequences of these through a distorted near future worse than ours currently. Their purpose is to challenge spectators and encourage them to think differently about these current contextual climates.
Dystopian Sci-Fi are recognisable for exploring ideas, linking to themes of...
Environmental Destruction: The worlds of these texts exist in inhabitable, inhumane places on earth that are inhumane to function in.
Government Control: The Government play such a significant role in these texts, arguably featuring no Government, or a tyrannical ruling individual.
Loss of Individualism: Identity is a major factor in dystopian sci-fi texts, depicting the dangers of conformity (usually linking to themes of government control, or consumerist behaviour), exploring the needs of society as a whole to that of the individual.
Survival: Inhabitable settings and ruling powers typically leave the inhabitants to fend for themselves.
Technological advancements/control: This is usually depicted as being controlling and a force that conforms to the loss of individualism, going beyond factors that improve everyday life.
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) is a film adaptation of the Phillip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and is the defining example of a Dystopian Science Fiction text. The film follows Rick Deckard, a retired Blade Runner who is tasked with one more job of 'retiring' 4 renegade "Replicants," bioengineered humans who are physically identical, but are also omniscient and superhuman in strength. The film can be considered Dystopian Sci-Fi for various reasons, one recognisable aspect of the world explored is the lack of any noticeable Government head, instead the world of Blade Runner is controlled by a man called Tyrell, the founder of Tyrell Corporation that is in charge of the modelling and selling of Replicants to other off-world colonies. Tyrell is recognisably the most powerful man in the world, with everyone working in service for him including the police, alongside his corporate building being located in the centre of L.A as he lives atop the gritty, crumbling underworld beneath him. The rise in technological advancements is also prevalent in the film, with L.A 2019 being a bleak world that is dominated by corporate advertisements flashing the chaotic streets. There is also a sense of individualism lost in the bleak underworld as everyone keeps to themselves, rather than criticising their inhumane living conditions and attempting to unite and make a change.
The themes of Dystopian Fiction can also be compared to another form of Speculative Fiction, that being Utopian Fiction, with the latter referring to an ideal setting intended to be appealing to spectators.
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