Global Dystopian Literature & Science Fiction

Topics : (1) Dystopian Literature :
               (2) Science Fiction :

¤ Dystopian Literature :

☆ Definition of the 'Dystopian Literature' :

• 'A Glossary of Literary Terms' by M. H. Abrams & Geoffrey Galt Harpham defines the term 'Utopia' as follow :

'The term dystopia (“bad place”) has come to be applied to works of fiction, including science fiction, that represent a very unpleasant imaginary world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political, and technological order are projected into a disastrous future culmination. Examples are Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1986). Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), set in a bleak, post-nuclear landscape, represents a dystopian extreme. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) contains both utopian and dystopian scenarios.'

☆ The Question :

Well, the observation gives a tint to uprising question in the minds of ardent readers, one such question can be asked such as :

Why do the modern era authors have to write literature of hideous kind which somewhat resembles the milieu of modera & post-modern age? Especially in the history of English Literatute.

So, the question can be answered as follow :

It is the well-acknowledged fact that the literature of any country and its prevalent span is the mirror - though at some extent tainted by authors own vision - of that society; on the basis of this argument, let us have look on as to why certain authors came up with dystopic literature of their time.

It is a duty of any author to represent its era in his/her writings, so did the modernist writers such as Orwell, Dickens, Woolf, Forster, and poets like Eliot, Auden, and Atwood. Let us have a look at the dystopic tomes that were produced during the year-span of 1900-2000 :

20th century :

1900s :

• The First Men in the Moon (1901) by H. G. Wells

• The Purple Cloud (1901) by M. P. Shiel

• Trylogia Księżycowa (The Lunar Trilogy) (1901 - 1911) by Jerzy Żuławski

• The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London

• Lord of the World (1908) by Robert Hugh Benson

• The Machine Stops (1909) by E. M. Forster

1940s :

• Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler

• "If This Goes On—" (1940) by Robert A. Heinlein

• The Moon Is Down (1942) by John Steinbeck

• Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell

• That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis

• Bend Sinister (1947) by Vladimir Nabokov

• Ape and Essence (1948) by Aldous Huxley

• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell

• Heliopolis (1949) by Ernst Jünger

☆ 1922 : The Annus Mirabilis of Literary Modernism :

The year 1922 has been known as the annus mirabilis (“miracle year”) of Anglo-American literary modernism, chiefly because of the near-simultaneous publication of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. The distinctive historical character of 1922 remains an ongoing concern: the year was at once a time of traumatic memory of World War I and a moment of renewed ambition for the radical experiments of modernism. During the war, Eliot, Joyce, and Woolf had enjoyed an unusual opportunity to revise and extend their aesthetic ambitions. Each of their works registers the more defiant provocation of postwar literature, but each confronts the powerful resistance of cultural and political authorities who saw the efforts, especially of Eliot and Joyce, as both meaningless and dangerous. The postwar period also saw the rapid expansion of new technologies (especially in transport and telecommunications) and a consumer society keen to enjoy the availability of freshly circulating material goods. D. H. Lawrence described the end of war as both a relief and a menace. This double valence captures the contrast between searing memories of battlefield death and anticipation of pleasure and plenitude in the Jazz Age. The central figures in this entry are at once newly confident in the adversarial mission of modernism and fully aware of the social complacency and cultural conservatism arrayed against them. The immediate felt disturbance of these works came through their formal challenge, in particular through the intersecting uses of many-voiced and multi-perspectival montage, an assemblage of fragmentary views, and a diversity of speaking tones. This conspicuous technique appears in closely related terms within the early films of Dziga Vertov and the postwar philosophy of logical atoms developed by Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. But the formal inventiveness exhibited during the year is no more prominent than the social concern. Especially as in 21st century, historical studies of the period have recovered the depth of interest in questions of race, empire, sexual debility, and social failure.

(Source : https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-60#:~:text=The%20year%201922%20has%20been,and%20Virginia%20Woolf's%20Jacob's%20Room.)

☆ Global Dystopian Literature :

So far we have seen the dystopian writings of England ranging from satires and novels to the poetic works and other verse forms, now let us voyage around various national literature which shares the dystopic qualities as alike Modernist Literature of England does.

Indian Dystopic Writings :

(1) Leila by Prayaag Akbar :

'Leila' is a 2017 Indian dystopian novel written by Prayaag Akbar. Set in the 2040s, the story follows Shalini, who tries to find her missing daughter Leila in a totalitarian regime. It was published by Simon & Schuster in several formats worldwide on 20 April 2017 and received a positive critical reception. It is also available as an audiobook narrated by Tania Rodriguez.

The novel was awarded the 2018 juried Crossword Book Award for fiction and the Tata Literature Live First Book Award the same year. It was also shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize. Leila was adapted as a Netflix series by Deepa Mehta, Shanker Raman and Pawan Kumar with Huma Qureshi, Siddharth, Rahul Khanna, Sanjay Suri and Arif Zakaria. The series premiered on 14 June 2019 to mostly positive reviews from critics.

(Source : Wikipedia)

(2) All Quiet in Vikaaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee :

Sarnath's new graphic novel, 'All Quiet in Vikaspuri,' set in a dystopian future, predicts the grave water wars in Delhi, the rehearsals of which have already begun. His latest work cuts across different genres and by the grace of Saraswati, (who will be worshipped in a few days), is as timely as it is insightful

Sarnath's book is an observation of precisely this: the messy urban planning, the lack of scientific knowledge for digging up groundwater and the harsh affects of privatisation on the poor.

All quiet in Vikaspuri takes these into account through the eyes of Girish, the psychic plumber who is in search of the mythical river Saraswati, who then guides the reader into the many faces of this ugly battle.

(Source : https://www.dailyo.in/arts/all-quiet-in-vikaspuri-a-graphic-novel-sarnath-banerjee-water-delhi-arvind-kejriwal-shiela-dixit/story/1/8831.html)

(3) Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan :

Harvest is a futuristic play by Manjula Padmanabhan about organ-selling in India. It was first published in 1997 by Kali for Women.

The play takes place in a future Bombay in 2010. Om Prakash, a jobless Indian, agrees to sell unspecified organs through InterPlanta Services, Inc. to a rich person for a small fortune. InterPlanta and the recipients are obsessed with maintaining Om's health and invasively control the lives of Om, his mother Ma, and his wife Jaya in their one-room apartment. The recipient, Ginni, periodically looks in on them via videophone and treats them condescendingly. Om's diseased brother Jeetu is taken to give organs instead of Om.

Harvest won the 1997 Onassis Prize as the best new international play. The playtext was published by Aurora Metro Books in 2003.

(Source : Wikipedia)

(4) Clone by Priya Sarukkai Chabria :

A revolutionary take on the classic dystopian science fiction novel, Clone inaugurates a new kind of writing in India. Priya Sarukkai Chabria weaves the tale of a fourteenth-generation clone in twenty-fourth-century India who struggles against imposed amnesia and sexual taboos in a species-depleted world. With resonant and allusive prose, Chabria takes us along as the clone hesitantly navigates through a world rendered unfamiliar by her expanding consciousness. This slow transformation is mirrored in the way both she and her world appear to the reader. The necessary questions Chabria raises revolve around a shared humanity, the necessity of plurality of expression, the wonder of love, and the splendor of difference.
 
'Clone’s' adventurous forays into vastly different times, spaces, and consciousness—animal, human, and post-human—build a poetic story about compassion and memory in the midst of all that is grotesque. 

(Source : https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo28590040.html)

(5) The Lesson by Sowmya Rajendran :

'The Lesson' written by Sowmya Rajendran is a chilling depiction of the society that we live in.  The society that we live in? Yes, you heard that right. All the symbolic characters and institutions in the book are not in some dystopian world; they exist very much as a part of our present society  – they are a personification of some unwritten, but widely accepted, code of conduct or practice prevalent in society.

China :

(1) China Dream by Ma Jian :

'China Dream' was published in 2018, three years before the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, and it provides insights into the Middle Kingdom that are becoming harder to find as control of local media tightens. It is a product of the “golden age” of Chinese science fiction, notes the New Scientist, that has been able to transcend the controls increasingly imposed on most non-fiction writing and public discussion. Author Liu Cixin has argued that, unlike the earliest days of the genre during the last days of the Qing dynasty, Chinese science fiction no longer fits a science-based optimism underlying the Communist vision. Such views, he observes, have “almost completely vanished.”

(Source : https://quillette.com/2020/08/11/chinese-science-fictions-disaster-dystopias/)

(2) Shengshi Zhongguo by Chan Kunchung :

The term "Shengshi," variously translated as "The Gilded Age" or "the Fat Years," has become a major meme in China lately.

Chan Koon-Chung's novel Shengshi Zhongguo 2013 (which roughly translates to "The Gilded Age: China 2013") has gone from being a marginalized, underground text — which couldn't even get published in Mainland China — to becoming a major sensation among China's intellectuals. And according to an essay in China Beat by Professor Zhansui Yu, Shengshi Zongguo 2013 "has changed the way that Chinese define political fiction," and its success is due to the fact that it exposes "the shocking darkness behind [China's] dazzling economic miracle."

In Chan's novel, everybody in China suffers from amnesia, and becomes unable to remember the most recent month — except for a few people. Two of these people are Feng Caodi and a Taiwanese writer, Old Chen, who search for Little Xi, Old Chen's true love who may remember some crucial events of the missing month. While they travel across China looking for Little Xi, they discover more and more evidence that something is terribly wrong at the heart of China's prosperity. The elites are becoming wealthy by preying on the most vulnerable members of society, and the Party remains in charge only through the use of dirty tricks. We meet a child slave, Zhang Dou, and encounter a village that's being wiped out by pollution from a nearby factory. At the same time, everybody in China seems utterly blissed out, and self congratulation about China's prosperity is the main pasttime among the elites.

(Source : https://gizmodo.com/the-dystopian-novel-thats-turning-china-upside-down-5600012)

America :

(1) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne :

The short list of great American novels is often topped by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. This classic novel from the cannon of American Literature exemplifies the genre of Dark Romanticism. In this story, the consequences of Hester Prynne's adulterous affair with the reverend Arthur Dimmesdale are borne out as she gives birth to their child and is forced to wear a Scarlet Letter A, embroidered on her bosom, as a sign of her adultery. Hawthorne is at his best as he treats with the complexities of sin and redemption as the story progresses and carries Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Pearl toward their respective destinies. Illustration at right by Mary Hallock Foote, 1878. We offer a useful The Scarlet Letter Study Guide for students and teachers.

The novel is classified under the Romantic genre and further classified as Dark Romanticism and Dystopian Fiction. I urge readers to study rather than skip over the two introductory chapters; "Preface to the Second Edition" and "The Custom-House." Those two works do not appear alongside the novel by accident, and I believe an appreciation of Hawthorne's experience at the Customs House is the key to a deeper understanding of the novel itself.

(Source : https://americanliterature.com/author/nathaniel-hawthorne/book/the-scarlet-letter/summary)

(2) I, Robot by Issac Asimov :

I, Robot is a fixup novel of science fiction short stories or essays by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950 and were then compiled into a book for stand-alone publication by Gnome Press in 1950, in an initial edition of 5,000 copies. The stories are woven together by a framing narrative in which the fictional Dr. Susan Calvin tells each story to a reporter (who serves as the narrator) in the 21st century. Although the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, robots, and morality, and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.

(Source : Wikipedia)

(3) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury :

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The book's tagline explains the title as "the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns": the autoignition temperature of paper. The lead character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.

People have used this novel to focus on the historical role of book burning. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature.

In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal. It later won the Prometheus "Hall of Fame" Award in 1984 and a "Retro" Hugo Award in 2004. Bradbury was honoured with a Spoken Word Grammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version.

Adaptations of the novel include François Truffaut's 1966 film, Ramin Bahrani's 2018 film, and two BBC Radio dramatizations.

(Source : Wikipedia)

Russia :

(1) Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky :

Glukhovsky’s post-apocalyptic debut novel was a bestseller when it came out in Russia in 2007 and was made into a very popular computer game. Its sequel, “Metro 2034,” was equally successful. The Metro Universe is set in a post-nuclear Earth with the remaining survivors lurking in subterranean tunnels. The biggest is the Moscow Metro, where all the stations are like mini-countries and chaos reigns in the dark tunnels themselves.

(2) Rabbits and Boa Contrictors by Fazil Iskander :

Abkhazian writer Fazil Iskander has written modern classics of both Soviet and Russian literature and is known for his unparalleled humor and satire.

His novella “Rabbits and Boa Constrictors” is a fairytale allegory of the Russian state, whose notorious figures are recognizable in these rabbits, boas and anacondas. The allegory helps to dissect the psychology and mechanics of a dictatorship, with its bureaucracy and submissive citizens – “their hypnosis is our fear,” one of the rabbits realizes. This book is a Russian cousin to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

(3) Escape Hatch by Vladimir Makanin :

Vladimir Makanin’s “Escape Hatch” is a novella that juxtaposes two worlds.

The first is the intelligentsia’s fragile refuge – an underground bunker – while the rest of the world is the overground city, devastated by wars and conflict. The escape hatch is the only connecting point between them. This book reminds me of the idiom “to bury your head in the sand.” If we hide away from the world, eventually there’ll be no way back. The narrowing escape route is a metaphor for the painful extinction of a beautiful animal who fails to adapt to an abruptly changing environment.

(4) The Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin :

When it comes to dystopia, we can’t leave out Sorokin, a modern giant of Russian literature who has been writing in this genre for a decade. “The Day of the Oprichnik” portrays Russia in 2027, a country that has become a twisted, military dictatorship in the style of Ivan the Terrible where the population is terrorized by the Oprichniki, the medieval secret police. The political satire is enhanced by the novel’s stylized prose that mimics archaic Russian, and the many historical parallels in the book emphasize the fact that Russia has, in fact, not changed at its core and has the same attitude to its people.

The novel was followed by its sequel “The Sugar Kremlin.” The books have won prestigious awards in Russia and were nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2013.

(5) The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya :

Tolstaya a living master, the golden standard for the Russian language. She presents the world after a nuclear apocalypse, when most technology, culture and language have been wiped out. In post-nuclear Russia villagers live like animals – and often look like them, with atavisms like horns and tails appearing among the people – but the scariest thing is the Slynx, a forest-dwelling monster and a metaphor for fear of the unknown.

The few books found after the Explosion are taken from people and stored in a book depository, where Benedict, the main protagonist, works. He reads books and copies them by hand to preserve them – randomly, from children’s literature to specialized technical guides. Just because he reads a lot does not mean he understands what is written, and Benedict is unable to educate himself enough to see the world around him; despite being obsessed with books, he still lives like a caveman. So, the people who govern and have access to all the information don’t necessarily preserve our culture.

(6) The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin :

Pelevin is another towering figure in Russian postmodern literature and has written a couple of dystopian works. “The Yellow Arrow” is a railway-themed allegorical novella. The train, a metaphor for Russia, which encompasses the entire world for all the characters, is heading towards a collapsed bridge. If Russia has ever known quiet periods, they were just ebbs, a time when worries briefly receded before the coming tsunami.

(Source : https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/12/10 best_russian_dystopian_novels_40265)

Africa :

(1) What the Dead Man Said by Chinelo Onwualu :

What the Dead Man Said by Chinelo Onwualu on Slate is a short story about climate change, migration, and family secrets. It is devastating science fiction that looks at a new Biafra, which broke away from Nigeria, in the 22nd century. The story follows a great return of its peoples from the diaspora, following the creation of the new nation state. Plagued by low fertility and childbirth, maintenance of the social structures and the society itself becomes a problem. The main character returns to Onitsha city in new Biafra, whose inhabitants prefer to live in tower communities, to witness the burial rites of her late father and confront his electronic ghost for answers and some form of closure. The story is sad, forlorn, and beautiful for all of that. This is a Future Tense Story, a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

(2) Dune Song by Suyi Davies Okungbowa :

'Dune Song' by Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a post-apocalyptic short story in Apex magazine, issue 120. It is about the people of Isiuwa who live in the middle of the desert, with the rest of the world swallowed up. They are barred from leaving on pain of death by its despotic ruler. The world they live in is bleak, hope is sparse, and fear dominant. The main character Nata finds life there unbearable. She has tried to leave before and failed, a crime which carries a death sentence, which she narrowly escaped. She is determined to try again though. The story explores the politics of totalitarianism and a government that seeks to protect its people by curtailing their freedom. Eventually, Nata will make an ally in a boy who also seeks to leave like her and together they will make a play for their freedom once again, with their lives in jeopardy, and forfeit, should they fail. The story is short, but packed, compact, evocative and fantastic.

(3) Eclipse Our Sins by Tlotlo Tsamaase :

Eclipse Our Sins by Tlotlo Tsamaase is a novelette published in Clarkesworld Issue 159. It is set in a world in which Mother Earth seeks revenge for the sins committed against her. In this world, physical illnesses can be caused by violent thoughts and actions. The world seeks to protect itself by punishing those who pollute it with xenophobia, rape, racism, and homophobia. The story follows a protagonist struggling to survive in this fallen world trying to revive itself, as she searches for a way to help her fragile and vulnerable family members. Eclipse Our Sins is a rich, complex and well told story that stands as a warning of a bleak, but likely future, should we choose not to heed the cries and warnings of Mother Earth.

(4) More Sea Than Tar is Osahon Ize-Iyamu :

More Sea Than Tar is Osahon Ize-Iyamu was published in Reckoning 3 and is set in a post-climate-dystopia Nigeria rife with flooding and pollution. The characters in it struggle to survive in this almost drowned world. Lack of food and resources, in addition to the flooding and pollution make this world very difficult to survive in. The main characters, Uti and his family, encounter violence and hard choices in their quest to find succour and eventually succumb to the troubles and disasters inevitable in a world like that. The story is well written and makes use of strong and vivid imagery, to show the possible damage that can result from a climate disaster in Sub-Saharan Africa.

(5) Oduduwa : The Return by Imade Iyamu :

Oduduwa: The Return, written by Imade Iyamu was published in the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, Volume 6. It is a futuristic sci-fi short story set on a planet where humans have been colonised and are bred for food, treated like animals by an alien species capable of telepathic communication through what they call their znog. The story examines colonialism, and the way humans see and treat other sentient creatures. The way the aliens are portrayed, and their implicit belief in their superiority and humans as inferior, forces the reader to see themselves in the position of the oppressed. It’s a touching and gripping story that utilizes the Yoruba cosmology and lore and a futuristic setting to paint a world we are all too familiar, and that we can relate with.

(Source : https://www.tor.com/2020/06/16/5-post-apocalyptic-and-dystopian-short-fiction-stories-by-african-authors/)

☆ Conclusion :

It has been proven that some of the major natioal powers have gone through the period wherin they at least had to or still has to face the problems of industrialisation, imperialism and the decadence of human civilization. The chief aim of this blog was to assert the fact that by and large every major country has once in a while apocalypsed the dystopian era and that is getting reflected in the literature of that respective nation; another point is that how these nations came out of such disparaging state of social, economical, and cultural crisis can be veritably taken in use for the well-being of the world.