Utopian And Dystopian Fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal society, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of an utterly horrible or degraded society, or dystopia. 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 and other speculative fiction genres, and arguably are by definition a type of speculative fiction.
More than 400 utopian works were published prior to the year 1900 in the English language alone, with more than a thousand others during the twentieth century.
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Famous quotes containing the words utopian and/or fiction:
“Children and old people and the parents in between should be able to live together, in order to learn how to die with grace, together. And I fear that this is purely utopian fantasy ...”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.”
—J.G. (James Graham)