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'Utopian fiction' is the creation of an ideal world as the setting for a novel. 'Dystopian fiction' is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, where utopian ideals have been subverted. Many novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction writing.

Contents

Utopian fiction

Dystopian fiction

Combinations

Subgenres

Cultural impact

See also

Utopian fiction

The word ''utopia'' was first used in this context by Thomas More in his 1516 work ''Utopia'', which literally means both "no place" and "best place" in Greek. In this work, More sets out a vision of an ideal society. An earlier example of a Utopian-like work from classical times is Plato's The Republic, in which he outlines what he sees as the ideal society and its political system.
Other examples include Aldous Huxley's ''Island'', Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels'', and B.F. Skinner's ''Walden Two''. ''Gulliver's Travels'' may also be seen as a satirical utopia because it is actually a comment on the society the author lived in. The same goes for ''Erewhon'' by Samuel Butler - where "Erehwon" is "nowhere" spelled in reverse.
Examples:

★ Thomas More's ''Utopia''

★ Aldous Huxley's ''Island''

★ Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels''

★ William Morris's ''News from Nowhere''

★ Edward Bellamy's ''

★ B.F. Skinner's ''Walden Two''

★ Charlotte Perkins Gilman's ''Herland''

★ Lois Lowry's ''The Giver''

★ Ursula K. Le Guin's ''The Dispossessed''

★ P.M.'s ''Bolo'bolo''

Dystopian fiction

Dystopias usually include elements of contemporary society and function as a warning against some modern trend. Often, the warning is against the threat of oppressive regimes in one form or another.
For examples of dystopias, see:

★ Scott Westerfeld's ''Uglies'', ''Pretties'', and ''Specials''

★ Paul Auster's ''In the Country of Last Things''

★ Stephen King's ''The Running Man''

★ Fritz Lang's film ''Metropolis''

★ Phillip K. Dick's ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?''

★ John Carpenter's ''Escape from New York'' and ''Escape from L.A.''

★ Larry and Andy Wachowski's film The Matrix

★ James De Mille's early ''A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder''

★ Yevgeny Zamyatin's ''We''

★ George Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' and ''Animal Farm''

★ Aldous Huxley's ''Brave New World'' and ''Brave New World Revisited''

★ Ray Bradbury's ''Fahrenheit 451''

★ Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and ''Player Piano''

★ Margaret Atwood's ''The Handmaid's Tale'' and ''Oryx and Crake''

★ Neal Stephenson's ''Snow Crash''

★ Ira Levin's ''This Perfect Day''

★ Ayn Rand's ''Anthem'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''

★ William Gibson's cyberpunk novels.

★ Alfonso Cuarón's film ''Children of Men'' based on P. D. James' ''The Children of Men

★ William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson's book ''Logan's Run''

★ Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

★ Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

★ Max Barry's "Jennifer Government"
Also, for extended listings, see:

★ Dystopian Literature

★ Dystopian Film

★ Dystopian Music, TV, and Games

★ Dystopian Comics

Combinations

Many works combine elements of both utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer from our world will journey to another place or time and see one society the author considers ideal, and another representing the worst possible outcome. The point is usually that the choices we make now may lead to a better or worse potential future world. Ursula K. Leguin's ''Always Coming Home'' fulfils this model, as does Marge Piercy's ''Woman on the Edge of Time''. In Starhawk's ''The Fifth Sacred Thing'' there is no time-travelling observer, but her ideal society is invaded by a neighbouring power embodying evil repression. In Aldous Huxley's ''Island'', in many ways a counterpoint to his better-known ''Brave New World'', the fusion of the best parts of Buddhist philosophy and Western technology is threatened by the "invasion" of oil companies.
In another literary model, the imagined society journeys between elements of utopia and dystopia over the course of the novel or film. At the beginning of ''The Giver'' by Lois Lowry, the world is described as a utopia, but as the book progresses, dystopia takes over.

Subgenres

A subgenre of this is 'ecotopian fiction', where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction. Ernest Callenbach's ''Ecotopia'' was the first example of this, followed by Kim Stanley Robinson in his ''California'' trilogy. Robinson has also edited an anthology of short ecotopian fiction, called ''. Michael Crichton has produced a notable work called ''State of Fear'', where he painstakingly footnotes the scientific assertions made by characters on both sides, then provides helpful appendices.
Anthony Burgess wrote in Part One of his novel 1985 about Nineteen Eighty-Four, stating that 'I prefer to call Orwell’s imaginary society a cacotopia - on the lines of cacophony or cacodaemon. It sounds worse than dystopia'
Another important subgenre is feminist utopias, for example Marge Piercy's novel ''Woman on the Edge of Time''. See also the overlapping category of feminist science fiction. Writer Sally Gearhart calls feminist utopian fiction political, saying it: contrasts the present world with an idealized society, criticizes contemporary values and conditions, sees men or masculine systems as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as equal to or superior to men, having ownership over their reproductive functions. A common solution to gender oppression or social ills in feminist utopian fiction is to remove men, either showing isolated female societies as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's ''Herland'', or societies where men have died out or been replaced, as in Joanna Russ's ''A Few Things I Know About Whileaway'', where "the poisonous binary gender" has died off. Ursula K. Le Guin's ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' is an example of a feminist utopian novel that does not remove men, but posits a non-human biology in which each individual is usually neuter, and sometimes male, sometimes female.

Cultural impact

Étienne Cabet's work ''Voyages en Icarie'' caused a group of Cabet's followers, known as Icarians, to leave France in 1848 and come to the United States to found a series of utopian settlements in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, California, and elsewhere. These groups lived in communal settings and lasted until 1898.

See also

★ Utopia

★ Dystopia

★ Cacotopia

★ Social science fiction