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Writer's pictureNick Saward

Dystopian Sci-Fi & Speculative Fiction

Updated: Nov 16, 2023

Dystopian fiction offers a vision of the future. Dystopias are societies in cataclysmic decline, with characters who battle environmental ruin, technological control, and government oppression. Dystopian fiction often explore themes like anarchism, oppression, and mass poverty.

Dystopian Sci-Fi are recognizable in their central themes that explore ideas 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.


Another major feature of dystopian fiction is Totalitarianism, which is defined as total social control over a population such as thought police and surveillance (again seen in the above article about Palestinian dystopia). Dystopian fiction is set in the near future instead of the far future in order to generate urgency about real events such as climate change and social relations. By textbook definition this is similar to science fiction, however they are very different.





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