3 - Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction

Summary

THE THIRD TRIBUTARY of the discourse on the future is utopian/dystopian fiction. While closely linked to utopian thought (in Thomas More's classic text Utopia from 1516, a sociopolitical utopia is developed within a framed narrative), the addition of an aesthetic element sets it apart from the more philosophical or practical texts discussed in the previous chapters. Readers of literary utopias derive aesthetic pleasure from imagined alternative realities and glimpses of possible, if highly improbable, futures. Utopian fiction has always worked with archetypes, inherited from classical Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions, as well as their subsequent interpretations. In particular, the opposition between the good place (paradise, the golden age, the promised land) and the bad place (hell, the Dark Ages, Armageddon)—with their associated tropes and motifs, as well as the unending conflicts between them—has inspired countless writers. Utopian fiction rarely comes without a sting, and we have become wary of depictions of ideal places, and their purveyors, which, however, does not diminish their popularity. In reviewing the Oxford critic and literary scholar John Carey's anthology of utopian fictions, writer Ian Samson noted: “the utopian writer is usually a malcontent and a melancholic harbouring grudges, if not a borderline psychotic, and this is presumably why we continue to enjoy their work so much.”

There have been countless attempts to define and demarcate utopias, anti-utopias, critical utopias, critical dystopias, utopian fiction, dystopian fiction and SF. The various schools of thought in the anglophone world (which have had a considerable impact on academic debates about utopian writing in Germany—as I will illustrate below) can be distinguished by their views on the function of utopian fiction vis-à-vis their readers and by their use of terminology. In addition, there is a strong political undercurrent in the discourse on utopian fiction. Traditionally, utopian writing is associated more with the political left (though Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is often cited as well). Many scholars are at pains to stress that Marxism, although expressly opposed to utopian thinking through its insistence on making a better world realizable, had forced utopian writers to become more pragmatic.

Scholars and critics are generally agreed, though, that the twentieth century has seen a decline of positive utopian fiction and a marked shift from satirical utopias to anti-utopias and dystopias.