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Utopian and dystopian fiction

Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos.[1] Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.

More than 400 utopian works in the English language were published prior to the year 1900, with more than a thousand others appearing during the 20th century.[2] This increase is partially associated with the rise in popularity of science fiction and young adult fiction more generally, but also larger scale social change that brought awareness of larger societal or global issues, such as technology, climate change, and growing human population. Some of these trends have created distinct subgenres such as ecotopian fiction, climate fiction, young adult dystopian novels, and feminist dystopian novels.

Cultural impact[edit]

Étienne Cabet's work Travels in Icaria caused a group of followers, the Icarians, to leave France in 1848, and travel to the United States to start a series of utopian settlements in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, California, and elsewhere. These groups lived in communal settings and lasted until 1898.[28]


Among the first decades of the 20th century in Russia, utopian science fiction literature popularity rose extremely due to the fact that the citizens wanted to fantasize about the future instead of just the fact that it was a new, up and coming genre of literature.[29] During the Cold War, however, utopian science fiction became exceptionally prominent among Soviet leaders. Many citizens of the Soviet Russia became dependent on this type of literature because it represented an escape from the real world which was not ideal at the time. Utopian science fiction allowed them to fantasize about how satisfactory it would be to live in a "perfect" world.

Applebaum, Robert. Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Booker, M. Keith. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1994.

Booker, M. Keith. Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1994.

Claeys, Gregory. Dystopia: A Natural History. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017.

Ferns, Chris. Narrating Utopia: Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1999.

Gerber, Richard. Utopian Fantasy. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955.

Gottlieb, Erika. Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of Terror and Trial. Montreal, McGill-Queen's Press, 2001.

Haschak, Paul G. Utopian/Dystopian Literature. Metuchen, NJ, Scarecrow Press, 1994.

Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the future: the Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London, Verso, 2005.

Kessler, Carol Farley. Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before 1950. Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Mohr, Dunja M. Worlds Apart: Dualism and Transgression in Contemporary Female Dystopias. Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2005.

Tod, Ian, and Michael Wheeler. Utopia. London, Orbis, 1978.

Sargent, Lyman Tower (November 1976). . Science Fiction Studies. 3 (3): 275–82.

"Themes in Utopian Fiction in English Before Wells"

. Twórczość Bolesława Prusa [The Art of Bolesław Prus], 2nd ed., Warsaw, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1972.

Szweykowski, Zygmunt

Archived 2014-05-30 at the Wayback Machine

The Society for Utopian Studies

Portal for Dystopian related Media

Dystopia Tracker

BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Carey, Steve Connor & Laura Marcus (In Our Time, Mar. 10, 2005)

Modernist Utopias

discusses current popularity of the dystopian genre.

The Dystopia genre