My love of the dystopian genre and its origins.

Hello all,

I wanted to do a post to explain my love of the dystopian genre. When I first started reading dystopian books I grew to love them because to me the dystopian genre offered a form of escapism. It is a sub-genre of the science-fiction genre ‘with a heritage reaching back into ancient times, to a pre-scientific world inhabited by peoples whose myths, legends and superstitions became a way of thinking about and explaining the wonders of the universe.’¹ This is according to Marshall B. Tymn in the American Studies Journal. He also states ‘Science fiction has its beginnings as least as early as the 2nd century with a Greek named Lucian who satirized his own society through the device of an imaginary moon voyage.’²

While this highlights the possibility of a new literary genre it was not until 1818 with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which was published two years after writing it at the infamous Villa Diodati in Switzerland. Villa Diodati was rented by author Lord Byron, who along with Shelley and another writer - John Polidori, created ghost stories for each other to entertain themselves from the bad weather. It was here that Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre (considered the first modern vampire story) were both created. Although that it a story for another time. I do posses both these literary texts, with Shelley's Frankenstein considered as the first science-fiction novel³, noted by Jeff Vandermeer in his book - Wonderbook (2013). I know Frankenstein is considered both Gothic and sci-fi by different people depending on who you ask; I am however one of those people who establishes it as a sci-fi novel.

Though these two genres may seem to be completely contradictory, they both fall under the genre known as speculative fiction which encompasses all range of genres in which the setting is not that of a real world. These genres include fantasy, horror, Gothic and sci-fi to name a few. The the dystopian genre is a sub-genre of the sci-fi genre. To me it allows writes to bring about alternative worlds and question the what ifs, by thinking about good and bad at the same time. I mean they can also serve as a response to society. Take Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985): ‘The Handmaid's Tale went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women’.⁴ This is another reason why I enjoy reading dystopian books - to gain another perspective on what is happening in society.

If you are a lover of dystopian books I hope you get another that you read my reviews I shall be doing. If you have not really read any dystopian book yet, I hope something stands out to you which can draw you into this fascinating sub-genre.

Until next time,

Thomas.

Footnotes:

¹ Marshall B. Tymm, “Science Fiction: A Brief History and Review of Criticism,” American Studies International 23, no. 1 (1985): 41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41278745.
² Tymm, “Science Fiction", 41.
³ Jeff Vandermeer. Wonderbook : An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. (New York: Abrams Image, 2018), xii.
⁴ Margaret Atwood. The Testaments. (London: Chatto & Windus, 2019), the endpaper.

Bibliography:

Tymn, Marshall B. “Science Fiction: A Brief History and Review of Criticism.” American Studies International 23, no. 1 (1985): 41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41278745.

Vandermeer, Jeff. Wonderbook: An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. New York: Abrams Image, 2018.

Atwood, Margaret. The Testaments. London: Chatto & Windus, 2019.