There has been a trend in Young Adult fiction in recent years, where “dystopian future” storylines seem to be en vogue, particularly in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genres…honestly, I don’t get it. Not only does everybody know by now that these tropes are thinly-veiled references to present-day politics, but there is enough freedom of speech in the first world that people can try going straight for the source: why not a “dystopian present” novel?
Science Fiction is not the creative frontier it once was. Notice how there hasn’t been a new Star Trek series since Enterprise, which went off the air almost a decade ago (the J.J. Abram’s reboots notwithstanding, as both were essentially remakes of The Wrath of Khan)? There is nothing left of this genre to explore or expand upon, which is made obvious in the formulaic approach taken to many (if not all) “dystopian future” stories these days:
- A “bread and circuses” style government that throws elements of socialist utopia (government-issued property, food, etc.) and magical technology at its citizens to distract them from blatant civil rights violations, usually (if not always) involving some sort of caste system: class warfare, arranged marriages, government-issued career “choices,” and so on.
- A teenage girl, towing the line of womanhood, who is somehow made aware that all is not well in Pleasant Valley (why it’s never a guy, I’m not sure – probably because most guys are oblivious to those sorts of things, hence the stereotype that conservatives are all white, upper-class, Protestant males).
- Some kind of love triangle between the female protagonist and two equally-but-separately undesirable men, though the heroine stays celibate to the bitter end (and eventually chooses one of the two).
- A disproportionate level of death and destruction to put a mere dent in the government’s policies.
The three series I draw this formula from the most are Matched, The Hunger Games, and Divergent, all of which are essentially interchangeable with each other. I did enjoy The Hunger Games books, but if you’ve read one of the aforementioned series, you’ve read them all. Instead, I propose that people start writing about their own current, respective dystopian societies, from present-day perspectives. Think about it – the United States alone has plenty of source material:
- Advanced technology
- Obamacare, while seen as a Godsend to many who voted in favor of it, actually forces those who fall through the cracks (such as single household members who didn’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford Obamacare right after graduating from community college that a grant paid for, i.e., me) onto Medicaid without destigmatizing the latter government assistance
- Haves vs. Have Nots, class warfare, etc.
- Racial/ethnic issues are still a thing, though largely related to social class and SES
- There are still GLBT issues in some of the hick states
- Stuff about the NSA
- Social networking and cyberbullying
The list goes on, and yet writers tend to fall into the same patterns and tropes. Though to play devil’s advocate, this could be the publisher’s fault, which is a common problem in high school literature textbooks in the US as well. Still, there seems to be a stigma enforced by society against people who don’t enjoy reading for leisure, and if they want their way, they can at least make it easy for skeptical people to enjoy dystopian fiction.
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