How do dystopias see our future?
When I started writing science fiction/dystopia, I think it was from a place of resentment against what wasn’t so human in our ways.
It was a short story that I started many moons ago. I didn’t plan for it to be dystopian, but the plot took me there. I ended up not finishing it anyway.
The story was about a society where different classes weren’t meant to deal with one another. A man was driving back home, one night when a woman of the highest class made a gesture of begging like the members of the lowest class did. Intrigued, the man stopped for her. Since she was a member of the highest class, the woman communicated with him non-verbally, which was a unique experience for him. He ended up taking her to his place and having to face what to do next and how well he could deal with the whole situation since she was able to read his mind.
Anyway, the world I created was more on the bleak side. My dystopian stories usually have the same traits of a barren, hopeless world, devoid of real connections, people seem to be isolated by certain social mechanisms that force them into submission to the rules of that world.
Writers and readers of the dystopian genre expect that failure of the human race, yes, there could be happy endings, undertone hopes and many suggested ways to reverse that fate. But, in general, dystopias depict a future for us, humans, as not so bright.
Even in our everyday life, people often express worries, concerns, and fears of the future, based on what we see right now, corruption, greed, wars, and behind the doors policies that are not in favor of life on earth.
But…
I realized recently something that might change how I plot my dystopian stories. I thought that if we believe that our future is bleak, then it might be so just for that reason. I know it sounds a bit woo woo, but I think I’ve started to favor a non-binary concept/vision about the future.
I still like and will continue working on my bleak dystopias, but it doesn’t have to continue to be so, it doesn’t even have to be all bleak with no brightness. In fact, having a bit of both will make it closer to reality.
I think, as a writer, I would like to explore our different ways as humans through my writings. I also like the thrill of creating worlds that convey a half-bleak and half-bright message.
We’ll see…