| This is an attempt to categorise dystopia. It is a difficult task as dystopias often are complex constructions and tend to borrow components from other dystopias. For instance, Blade Runner can, to one degree or another, be said to contain elements from cyberpunk dystopias, tech noir dystopias, overpopulation dystopias, capitalistic dystiopias and so on and so forth. Consequently, one depiction may occur in several different categories. |
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| Totalitarian dystopias As the name suggests, totalitarian societies utilise total control over and demand total commitment from the citizens, usually hiding behind a political ideology. Totalitarian states are, in most cases, ruled by party bureaucracies backed up by cadres of secret police and armed forces. The citizens are often closely monitored and rebellion is always punished mercilessly. Stories taking place in totalitarian dystopias usually depict the hopeless struggle of isolated dissidents. Totalitarian dystopias have, in general, dark psychological depths and strong political qualities. Hitler's Third Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union were real examples of such societies. Examples: Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel; TV play; motion picture), We (novel), Fatherland (novel; TV movie). |
Nineteen
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Bureaucratic dystopias, or technocratic dystopias, are strictly regulated and hierarchial societies, thus related to totalitarian dystopias. Where totalitarian regimes strive to achieve complete control, bureaucratic regimes only strive to achieve absolute power to enforce laws. When totalitarian regimes tend to found their own laws, bureaucratic regimes tend to defend old laws. The law always seem to stand in conflict with rational thinking and human behaviour. To change status quo, even everyday procedures, is a long and difficult process for the citizens. It goes without saying such dystopias have strong satirical qualities and to some extent surreal qualities as well. Examples: Brazil (motion picture), The Trial (novel; several TV plays; TV movie). |
Brazil
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A cyberpunk society is essentially a drastically exaggerated version of our own. Cyberpunk is a heterogeneous genre, but most dystopias have the following settings: the technological evolution has accelerated, environmental collapse is imminent, the boards of multi-national corporations are the real governments, urbanisation has reached new levels and crime is beyond control. Important, but not necessary essential, concepts in cyberpunk are cybernetics, artificial enhancements of body and mind, and cyberspace, the global computer network and ultimate digital illusion. Cyberpunk stories are often street-wise and violent. It is debatedly the most influential dystopian genre ever. Examples: Neuromancer (novel; comic), Blade Runner (novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; motion picture; comic; computer game), Matrix (motion picture), Strange Days (motion picture). |
Blade Runner
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Tech noir is a hybrid between high-tech sci-fi and hard-boiled film noir. It is mainly a cinematic genre, more seldom literary, and as such difficult to demarcate and define, just like film noir. Tech noir is related to cyberpunk and often labeled as such, but tech noir dystopias usually have more psychological and existential depth. The atmosphere is more mesmerising, threatening, gloomy and melancholic than in average cyberpunk and the approach on technology, urbanisation and environment is much more complex. The spectacular contexts in tech noir dystopias are mainly backgrounds for intellectual experiments, in most cases extremely innovative and imaginative. Examples: Blade Runner (novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; motion picture; comic; computer game), Dark City (motion picture), The City of Lost Children (motion picture), Brazil (motion picture). |
Dark City
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This is not an established label, but is supposed to cover all dystopias located to outer space. In these stories, man's exploration of the universe did not become the happy adventure everyone expected. Colonisation of other planets equals heavy industrialisation and interstellar war between distant civilisations equals mechanised slaughter. Off-world dystopias are often closely related to cyberpunk dystopias or at least tend to borrow cyberpunk features. It goes without saying this is a heterogeneous genre and most alien horror stories technically belong here. Considering the almost unlimited possibilities, this genre is underdeveloped. Examples: Alien (motion picture: part of series; novellisation; computer game), The Forever War (novel), Outland (motion picture; novellisation). |
Aliens |
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Crime dystopias may have different settings. These societies have been infested with grave criminality and the authorities are about to lose control or have already lost it. This criminality may span from street crime to organised crime, more seldom governmental crime such as corruption and abuse of power. The authorities often use drastic and inhumane measures to fight the moral decay, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps out of necessity. The society is often in imminent danger of becoming totalitarian. Crime dystopias are not seldom political statements, usually of a radical and controversial nature. Exampels: A Clockwork Orange (novel; motion picture), The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (novel; motion picture), The Escape from New York (motion picture: part of series). |
A Clockwork |
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The population of the world has grown dramatically and the limited resources of our planet are exhausted. Mankind is living in dispair and society is in imminent danger of becoming or has already become social-darwinistic. There is an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and military and police are used to control the starving masses. There are many parallells between overpopulation dystopias and cyberpunk dystopias, especially when speaking of environment and urbanisation. This kind of dystopia is rather rare, which is surprising: it may become an imminent problem in the near future. Examples: Make Room! Make Room! (novel; motion picture: Soylent Green), Stand on Zanzibar (novel). |
Soylent Green |
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Leisure dystopias are probably best described as utopias gone wretched or failed paradise-engineering projects. In these societies, all problems have been solved, at least officially, and all citizens are living in wealth and happiness. Unfortunately, this is often achieved by suppressing individuality, art, religion, intellectualism and so on and so forth. Conditioning, consumption, designer-drugs, light entertainment and similar methods are widely used in order to combat existential misery. Conformity is encouraged as it makes it easier to control the population. The government's means of control are always of a very subtle nature and open repression is basically non-existent. Leisure dystopias are not very common nowadays, probably as Utopia is almost extinct as concept. Examples: Brave New World (novel; TV movie), Demolition Man (motion picture), The Joy Makers (novel), Things to Come (motion picture). |
Brave New World
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Apocalyptic dystopias Mankind, or sometimes a single nation or an ethnic group, are facing Armageddon, be it nuclear war, gigantic meteorites or nature disasters. The main focus may be political, but nevertheless may apocalyptic stories expose the dark psychological depths of mankind. The victims of the apocalypse may be egoistic, short-sighted, cynical and opportunistic, even in the very moment of annihilation. Actually, it is questionable if apocalyptic stories really are dystopian, but they usually have strong dystopian qualities. So-called techno thrillers, WWIII scenarios, would technically belong to this category. Examples: Dr. Strangelove (novel: Red Alert / Two Hours to Doom; motion picture), Japan Sinks (novel; motion picture), Until the End of the World (motion picture). |
Doctor |
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The cause is nuclear war, environmental collapse or deadly epidemics. The effect is usually anarchy and survival of the fittest, and not seldom a regression to feudalism as well. Many, although far from all, stories taking place in post-apocalyptic dystopias are simple action adventures with few, if any, depths. There are often obvious parallells to epic western movies as well as a grim sense of humour. A common plot includes a cynical lone-wolf anti-hero who reluctantly aids a small community which is trying to re-establish civilisation and has to fight brutal and savage bands of raiders. Post-apocalyptic dystopias are often classified as cyberpunk, something I find questionable. Examples: Road Warrior (motion picture: part of series), Waterworld (motion picture), The Omega Man (motion picture), Warday (novel), A Canticle for Leibowitz (novel). |
Waterworld
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Alien dystopias Earth has become occupied or infiltrated by another spieces from some distant solar system. The take-over is not seldom of a stealthy kind, an obvious parallell to Cold War paranoia. In many alien dystopias, the Nazi rule in Europe during WWII is an evident source of inspiration: opression and rebellion, resistance and collaboration. The occupiers almost always display a grave lack of empathy and tend to treat human beings as worthless slaves, primitive animals or even mindless prey. At their very best, alien dystopias deal with culture shocks in intelligent and imaginative ways. Examples: V (TV series), The Tripods (TV series), Battlefield Earth (novel; motion picture), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (motion picture; two remakes). |
The Tripods
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Those dystopias are perhaps better described as twisted dreamscapes. They are more or less dark, claustrophobic societies on the borderline of reality and tend to be diminished to suggestive backgrounds for personal transformations. The hero always lose orientation under the influence of e.g. paranoia, insanity, disease, drugs, perversion or violence. Those dreamscapes are perhaps not real dystopias, but they definitely have dystopian qualities and interesting psychological depths. Surreal dystopias often borrow asthetic features from film noir and tech noir. Examples: The Naked Lunch (novel; motion picture), Videodrome (novel; motion picture). |
Videodrome |
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| uchronian dystopias Uchronian stories are alternative histories, so-called What if? stories. In most cases, uchronian dystopias deal with different outcomes of World War II and the Cold War. Besides being interesting intellectual experiments, they tend to explore nightmare societies in suggestive ways and emphasise the importance of fighting such systems. Uchronias often have an impressive accuracy when dealing with historical facts. This is basically the only dystopian category in which the stories explicitly may take place in the present or the past. Examples: Fatherland (novel; TV movie), SS-GB (novel), USSA (novel), The Man in the High Castle (novel). |
Fatherland |
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In machine dystopias, man has become just another production asset. The workers have to adapt to the machines, and not vice versa. Concequently, work is monotoneous and dangerous. Efficiency is the goal and uniformity is the means. If there are any pleasures, they equal mindless consumption. Machine dystopias express fear of technology, not seldom in a naive manner, and it goes without saying they are more or less out-dated today. Nowadays, their artistic qualities are more interesting than their politicial. Nevertheless, they may say something about the conformity of modern civilisation. Examples: THX-1138 (motion picture), Metropolis (novel; motion picture). |
THX-1138 |
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| Pseudo-utopian dystopias Your utopia might be my dystopia and vice versa. Creators of utopias often have a very clear picture of their personal paradise and they dislike people who dare to critisise their dreamscapes. Many so-called utopias are strictly hierarchical, not to say militarised or even crypto-totalitarian. The ruling class is an intellectual elite with absolute power and dissidents are threatened with disdain or even cruelty. It goes without saying that external enemies are dealt with mercilessly, almost sadistically. Technically, most utopias belong to this category. In my opinion, there cannot be such a thing as a perfect society, as everyone has their own picture of Utopia. Let us all keep on dreaming, though. Examples: Starship Troopers (novel; motion picture), Utopia (novel), A Modern Utopia (novel). |
Starship |
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| Feminist dystopias As the name suggests, feminist dystopias deal with oppression of women. The feminist dystopia is built on patriarchal structures and the role of woman has been diminished, e.g. to house-keeping and breeding. The society is often totalitarian or at least crypto-totalitarian, sometimes with more or less obvious parallells to fascism as represented in Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. To one degree or another, all dystopias are patriarchal, but in feminist dystopias it is explicit. This genre is debatedly one of the most innovative dystopian genres nowadays, but have received a remarkably small amount of attention, all too small in my opinion. Examples: The Handmaid's Tale (novel; motion picture), Walk to the End of the World (novel), Woman at the Edge of Time (novel), Bulldozer Rising (novel).
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The Handmaid's Tale
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Time-travel dystopias In these stories, dark ages are waiting ahead: nuclear war, artificial intelligence take-over, environmental collapse, plagues etc. In most time-travel stories, agents are sent to our time in order to change history. As the name suggests, time-travel dystopias usually focus more on how certain events can change history, rather then the actual out-come. Consequently, future nightmare societies are often vaguely described and not seldom rather shallowly crafted in such stories. The purpose is to play with our fear of the future and emphasise that we can create our own future. It goes without saying they may be quite idealistic, sometimes even naive. Examples: The Terminator (motion picture: part of series), 12 Monkeys (motion picture), Planet of the Apes (motion picture: part of series, remake), Millennium (novel; motion picture). |
The Terminator
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Capitalistic dystopias The capitalistic dystopia does not differ too much from our own reality. Often, it is a brutal parody of modern civilisation. Capitalistic dystopias are always merciless consumption societies: commerce is the first commandment and ethics is merely a marketing tool. Mega-corporations rule the world and there are no longer such things as integrity, dignity, compassion or faith. The protagonist seldom fights the system, simply because it is impossible: the oppressor is faceless and collective. Capitalistic dystopias basically equal cyberpunk dystopias nowadays. Examples: The Space Merchants (novel), Robocop (motion picture: part of series; TV series), Neuromancer (novel; comic), Brave New World (novel; TV movie). |
Robocop |
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