Saturday, June 28, 2008

Dystopia

Dystopia is a difficult genre. If there is anything we don't know, it's the future. What the dystopic form has revealed is the imagination's capacity for horror, its proclivity for self-terrorizing, in a word, its fears. The genre has made many lasting contributions to the collective consciousness, namely, the doublespeak of 1984, the genetic manufacturing of Brave New World, and the rebelling technology of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But these lessons are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. An full investigation into the literary form is necessary.

Thesis: All literature is dystopia: representations of conflict, fear and death.
(William Wren gave me the idea.)

A preliminary list of novels and films:

1. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
2. 1984, George Orwell
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick
4. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
5. A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick (Richard Linklater)
6. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
7. Battlestar Galactica, Glen Larson and Ronald Moore
8. Bladerunner, Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick
9. Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
10. Pastoralia, George Saunders
11. We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
12. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
13. Metropolis, Fritz Lang
14. Brazil, Terry Gilliam
15. Soylent Green, Richard Fleischer and Harry Harrison
16. Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron and P.D. James
17. The Purple Could, M.P. Shiel
18. Tom's A-Cold, John Collier
19. No Blade of Grass, John Christopher
20. The Day of the Triffids
21. Damnation Alley, Roger Zelazry
22. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart
23. Beyond Armageddon, Walter M. Miller
24. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller

1 comment:

William Wren said...

can i add 'journey to the end of the night', 'nausia', 'erazerheadd' and almost every other thing i read and watch