Dystopian Fiction - Comments

look @ me commenting on the topic of dystopian now that it's sort of dying down.

i used to be obsessed w/ dystopian as many people were, but only bc my friends were really interested in the genre. i will admit to really enjoying the hunger games series & trying many other things like the divergent series, but while i was reading this & many others of the same genre in the bookstores & libraries my town has to offer, i couldn't see the difference between any of them.

divergent started to sound a lot like the hunger games. near the end of the first book where four is starting to have a mental break like peeta did regarding the capital's abuse, i had to stop & point it out to my friends like "um...? did you guys catch this?" which they clearly didn't of course being that they loved it so much. but i being the picky reader that i am started to feel ten times more irritated w/ every book i picked up.

yes, i agree that dystopian was the trend a few years ago & being that i was seventeen then w/ basically no standard when it came to reading, i was intrigued. i also read books like delirium (??? it sucked so bad, i can't even) or graduation day (skimmed it *sigh*) & it's just a repetition of the hunger games in a separate universe. like im stuck in a torture chamber watching the same episode of spongebob or something.

so being that i grew out of my dystopian obsession rather quickly, it's interesting for me to read your article three years after it's been posted. & it's also interesting to see everyone else & their comments! i will say though, most of the dystopian's i love are the one's that were released back before the trend began, 1984 is a great example

We're actually studying dystopian fiction for our coursework topic in A2 English Lit. 'Brave New World' by Huxley, 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy and T.S. Elliot's 'The Wasteland'. All very, very interesting reads and amazing to pick apart. They're brilliant to study and you can pick so many literary theories out of them.

My NaNo novel is aiming to be dystopian/adventure, and it was nice to see someone recognising dystopia as a genre :)

P.s. The Handmaid's Tale is one of the best dystopian novels I've read!

I enjoy reading dystopian fiction because it usually magnifies the already existing negative aspects of the society we are living in. Dystopias can send a message to readers, a warning against what societies can turn into if they don't pay enough attention. I'm actually an MA student of English lit. and my thesis is about dystopian fiction :)

1984 by George Orwell is a classic and famous example of a Dystopia.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Wonderfully written. One of my most favourite books.

I agree. I don't think many people would see the appeal of a story in a perfect utopia unless something went wrong, probably turning it into a dystopian setting anyway. Dystopian fiction allows the writer freedom to write whatever they like with the characters having some purpose involving improving their world. Great article

I love dystopian fiction. One of the most curious things about it is how closely intertwined dystopian is to utopian fiction. Veronica Roth stated that "Divergent" was actually her idea of utopia fiction.

Creepy, but Haylie Jaed pretty much took the words right out of my mouth, AND even listed Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World...so yeah, what she said and high five.

Dystopian fiction is one of my favourite genres to read, but I'm finding that a lot of people don't realise it's even a genre! Hoping to see some new stories start popping up now that this article has been published.

Just have to throw it out there, but some of my favourites were Huxley's "Brave New World", Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Can't go past the classics.

I like both styles. I prefer writing in Dystopian though (:

Writing Dystopian is awesome, I enjoy all of my dystopian fictions I write.

It's basically the only thing I write, anyways.

Not only that...it's really good for people who enjoy conspiracy theories and politics and so on. My brother and I were just talking today in the car about a world without money...it would seem good at first, but it would quickly escalate into chaos. It would turn into a pack mindset sort of world - strongest survives. Eventually it would go through a huge dystopian stage and maybe one hundred years down the road it would finally become a dystopia with the only people surviving being the strongest that had gone through natural selection. Really interesting when you think about it. And I think it's just a really good idea to work with because people love imagining disaster movies/scenarios. They don't actually love being in them, so they imagine and write about them instead. I've always loved writing dystopian fic; I'm actually working on one right now except it's more of an AU where males/females are more divided (males in labor careers, females in medicinal) and sex slaves are more common and public. It's very fun and I love writing the haunting, eerie atmosphere around it.

Very good article, and I enjoyed reading it. :) <3