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How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

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Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#41

Post by waterhouse »

ryacko wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #4

Interesting. "In the totalitarian-dystopian genre, the prototypical narrative content elements — e.g., setting, character, plot, and story morals — are relatively clear and consistent; thus, they are “filled in” according to widely shared genre conventions." Writers can thus write in such worlds without extensive world-building. It's like grinding out police procedurals or zombie novels. Not every writer can build wo…

Interestingly enough, Isaac Asimov pioneered the Sci-Fi detective story. Read somewhere that Campbell thought it couldn’t be done since it requires explaining technology and would ruin the reader’s enjoyment. Spoiler: Chekov’s Gun, and the assumption that new technologies are so seemless as to be unnoticeable or rarely commented on.

I found the citation, from the introduction to The Caves of Steel.

"Campbell had often said that a science-fiction mystery story was a contradiction in terms; that advances in technology could be used to get detectives out of their difficulties unfairly, and that the readers would therefore be cheated.

I sat down to write a story that would be a classic mystery and that would not cheat the reader—and yet would be a true science-fiction story. The result was The Caves of Steel. It appeared in Galaxy as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1953 issues, and in 1954, it was published by Doubleday as my eleventh book.

There was no question but that The Caves of Steel was my most successful book to date. It sold better than any of my earlier books; it elicited nicer letters from readers; and (best proof of all) Doubleday smiled at me with greater warmth than ever before. Until that point, they wanted outlines and chapters from me before handing me contracts, but after that I got my contracts on my mere statement that I was going to write another book."

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#42

Post by TomMarius »

opwieurposiu wrote: post #35
devoply wrote: post #10

> that violence and illegal activities may be both legitimate and necessary to pursue justice. Dystopian fiction appears to subtly expand the political imagination of viewers and readers to encompass a range of scenarios outside the normal realm of democratic politics, and what people then consider reasonable and thinkable appears to expand accordingly. America was founded on a revolution, and often changing the syst…

It seems kind of silly to argue that the democratic politics is legitimate and violence is not, when the whole point of the democratic state is to create a monopoly on violence. What fiction fails to teach you is that being good at violence is a lot of work! To be good at it you need to take krav or bjj or mma classes at least 3 times a week and go to the gun range at least once a week. I personally think society wou…

I've seen development of a defense field similar to the one they had in Dune. Maybe soon.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#43

Post by TomMarius »

devoply wrote: post #40
opwieurposiu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems kind of silly to argue that the democratic politics is legitimate and violence is not, when the whole point of the democratic state is to create a monopoly on violence. What fiction fails to teach you is that being good at violence is a lot of work! To be good at it you need to take krav or bjj or mma classes at least 3 times a week and go to the gun range at least once a week. I personally think society wou…

Poe's law. Fact is a lot of the political propaganda in the media (including movies) is used by the State to manufacture consent to use violence... usually as State intervention to liberate people and to recruit soldiers to protect freedom and train them so that they become good at violence. For instance see this, https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/9ztk4l/can... Regardless the political imagination of…

> However, when those group become large movements they perhaps they could possibly lead to some sort of uncontrollable and undesirable violence.

There is a lot of news about the US police doing exactly that, and not just violence per se, also things like NSA...

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#44

Post by _carl_jung »

ahartmetz wrote: post #23
davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

Try Iain Banks, though IMO the world-building is better than the plots.

Not to be pedantic, but I think you mean Iain M Banks. Same person but the stuff he writes under Iain Banks isn't sci-fi.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#45

Post by concordDance »

davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

Read Perilious Waif? Adventure in a sci fi future where the vat majority are far better off but individuals can still make a difference.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#46

Post by closeparen »

Animats wrote: post #4

Interesting. "In the totalitarian-dystopian genre, the prototypical narrative content elements — e.g., setting, character, plot, and story morals — are relatively clear and consistent; thus, they are “filled in” according to widely shared genre conventions." Writers can thus write in such worlds without extensive world-building. It's like grinding out police procedurals or zombie novels. Not every writer can build wo…

The subtext of almost all dystopian fiction is to be highly suspicious of grand visions for better futures.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#47

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

Absolutely sick of it.

Not everyone is writing about dystopias, but the inflection point isn't quite here yet.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#48

Post by omnimus »

Lately I have seen term Solarpunk on reddits, tumblrs and scuttlebutt thrown around. I think people start to realize we need positive ideas for future. Solarpunk is future where we make it, clean energy wins, automation will empower us instead of enslaving us.

Maybe its time for some of that.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#49

Post by AstralStorm »

wtracy wrote: post #26
davidw wrote: post #21

Is anyone else sick of dystopian stuff? I want to read something where... sure, there are problems, but where people are out there doing difficult, adventurous and good things. Something maybe even kind of motivational. Or at best, just nice escapist stories without all the doom and gloom. If I want to read about stressful, bad, evil things, I'll pick up a newspaper.

And this is how science fiction authors have been shooting themselves in the foot. The golden age of science fiction, the era when science fiction was most popular with the public, occurred when most of that fiction had a positive outlook on the future. I don't think that's coincidence. To any aspiring authors out there: If you want to stand out and be successful, write stories that show a path to successfully overco…

The difference is that this future was never delivered. Pessimism is expected after that.

Worse, showing how obstacles are overcome and not seeing it applied in real world is soul crushing.

This is often because politics turned from initially being a way of solving problems to a popularity ascend machismo contest - and it infects everything.

Re: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

#50

Post by qubex »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #31
labster wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the major arguments of postmodernism is that the "shared model" of modernist progress -- universal "progress" had some bad side effects. Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. And modernity brought other new large problems, from global warming to weak communities to mass propaganda. There were so many excesses that we had to put on the brakes. That said, postmo…

> Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. Languages don't get destroyed by rearing children in isolation so they're left unable to speak. Languages die when their population shifts over to a language with more to offer. (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.) You can go pretty much anywhere rare languages are spoken and hear parents tell you they ho…

I agree with you wholeheartedly until you stated this:

> (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.)

It all hinges on your use of market: I would have written society. It's extremely telling that nowadays ‘market’ and ‘society’ have become almost synonymous, not because markets have subsumed the role of societies at large, but because monetary exchanges have become the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction. Implicit in your choice of words is the notion that the only thing that merits making the effort to interact with others is the exchange for the sake of profit.

I'm an economist but this kind of stuff saddens me profoundly. If this isn’t a path straight to dystopia then I don't know what is.

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