Why we need it – New Dystopian for Dystopian Fatigue

 Book Reviews, Books, Dystopian  14 Responses »
Aug 312011
 

New Dystopian

Don’t worry, you’ve never heard of this term before because I just made it up about 10 seconds ago, but I think this is a glimpse of the future of dystopian/apocalyptic sub-genres. Just remember you heard it here on Tell Great Stories first. Someone write it down so one day I’ll be listed as the coiner of the term on the Wikipedia page.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Anyway, for about the past year, the YA-verse has been suffering from dystopia fatigue (not entirely unlike vampire fatigue, paranormal romance fatigue, trilogy fatigue, and love triangle fatigue.)

Contrary to popular opinion, the fatigue is NOT because the books being published in these sub-genres are bad. It’s because they aren’t unique. Sure, they might take place in different countries, in different cities, with a different twist, but it always plays out more or less the same.

The Story We All Know

Protagonist is oppressed by something bigger than themselves (a corporation, a government, water shortage, oil shortage, disease, zombies, poverty, hunger, whatever.)

The protag is given an extraordinary opportunity that allows them to catch a glimpse of who they really are or could be and a world that needs someone to fight. The Extraordinary Opportunity is better known by writers as The First Plot Point and is often thrust upon the protag unwillingly. Once the protag’s eyes are opened, of course, there’s no going back.

Through is the only direction, and so the protag spends the next 50,000 words fighting against themselves and against the oppressor in order to come out triumphant (or nearly so) at the end with a hot love interest by their side. Ta-da.

Which means, of course, there are no surprises.

And as readers, we are just a little bit tired of reading the same thing. We love these settings, these scenarios, these terrible events, but we yearn to be taken by surprise, to feel like the characters are in mortal danger, to believe there are serious stakes and regardless of our passion, we may not triumph.

Why We Need It

New Dystopian is a term I cooked up because I needed a new piece of language to describe a book I recently read that is dystopian but does not, in any way, look like the dystopian we’ve seen in the last five years

It feels different.

 

It disturbs.

 

It takes us by surprise.

 

There are stakes so high that success is doubtful.

 

And we’re not sure there will be a happy ending.

 

In fact, if I hadn’t told you this book was a dystopian, you wouldn’t have known until more than halfway through the book. Because it doesn’t flash its “Dystopian” tramp stamp at everyone. It’s subtle, more like, a way of life and not a defining characteristic.

And I have a feeling that the fatigue we’ve been feeling lately is going to lead to these sorts of books that are dystopian but aren’t so in your face about it. There won’t be cities burning or roving gangs of thugs in the wastelands. Government control won’t be so in-your-face. Dystopian conspiracy theorists will hang out at coffee shops with alien conspiracy theorists.

Never Let Me Go

The book I’ve been slowly building up to was also made into a movie, so if you’ve seen the movie but not read the book, I beg you not to give anything away in comments, as there are some key differences.

The book? Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

And the thing is, I can’t really tell you much about the book because in giving anything away I’d ruin the unfolding and trust me when I tell you, you don’t want me to do that. So I’m going to have to be a little backward about describing the book to you.

Ok, so, the book is told through the recounting of a girl named Kathy H. who grew up at a boarding school called Hailsham somewhere in England. When the book begins she’s a little older, around 31, and we know there is an important reason she’s about to tell us her story, but we’re not sure what the important reason is until like, 75% of the way through the book. And that’s ok. That’s part of the beauty of this book. It’s all in the unfolding.

So Kathy starts out when she was  middle school aged, but she often jumps around, going much younger and much older in her stories. There’s a certain rhythm of memory that you can’t fake here – I feel honest-to-god like we’re sitting at the knees of a new friend telling us her life story and one memory reminds her of something else that happened ten years later or in telling a remembered moment she suddenly understands it so much differently than she did back then. The unfolding story is as much a revelation to her as it is to us.

Kathy’s world is intersected by two friends – Tommy, the boy she loves, and Ruth, her bossy daydreaming best friend. They are interesting in their own right, but let me say this: Pay Very Close Attention to Tommy. I believe that a deeper understanding of the story can be seen through Tommy’s character. He is maybe the only character who’s mind is filled with screams against what is being done to him.

The students of Hailsham are special. How are they special? Well. That would be telling.

But here’s the thing- it doesn’t matter why they are special. Their specialness does not stop them from having normal childhoods full of drama and heartache and manipulation. Their childhoods are not all that different from the one I wrote about in my glittery unicorn diaries. It’s about favorite teachers and sports, doing well, acceptance and bullies. There’s this story Kathy tells about how her friend Ruth, when they were very young, told a small group of them that there was a conspiracy to kidnap their favorite teacher and that Ruth had been charged with protecting this teacher. She tells them she’s forming a private guard and they are to silently, without this teacher ever knowing, protect her and root out the conspirators. These little girls take on this duty with the perseverance and dedication that only little girls can muster.

Do you know you’re in a dystopian story when you’re living it?

Let me ask you this – If we were living in a dystopian society right now, where the government controlled us entirely and we were housed in gated communities were unapproved books were burned and people imprisoned for the smallest of infractions, would you walk around thinking to yourself, “Man this is one hell of a dystopian society.”

Probably not.  You’d probably think, “Man, this life is hell.”

You probably wouldn’t spend most of your time dissecting the goings on of the government. You’d be too busy keeping your head down and food in your mouth. Most of the dystopian books coming out lately can’t stop pointing out their genre to you, but not Never Let Me Go (which, granted, came out in 2005, so it’s not new new.) This is what I mean by New Dystopian. It’s not a genre for this book, it’s just the way life is.

Which is why the ending, though you can kind of see it coming, slams into you like a freight train.

I can’t recommend this book enough, though for all that is holy in this world please do not go watch the trailer for the movie. Don’t go anywhere near the movie until you’ve read the book. The movie is lovely and captures the heart of the story sure, but it also lacks the subtle  nuances of the book that make it such an intense and life changing read. The trailer alone will give away the twist (ARGH! HULK SMASH) and flashes HI I’M AN OPPRESSIVE DYSTOPIAN all over the screen.

So just avoid it until you’ve read the book first.

If you’ve read the book or if you don’t mind spoilers, author Margaret Atwood digs into the heart of this creepy tale in this book review.

This book is for anyone who has ever loved the following books but the idea of reading yet another dystopian book/trilogy fills you with a sort of exhaustion that makes you think, “I can’t be bothered.”

  • Delirium
  • XVI
  • The Hunger Games
  • Wither
  • Divergent
  • The Water Wars
  • Matched
  • Restoring Harmony

 Where do you want to see Dystopian fiction go next?

The Problem of Free Will, Free Choice

 Dystopian  22 Responses »
Aug 302011
 

It always comes down to free will and free choice. Sometimes it comes by way of art or choosing who you get to love, or what music you get to listen to or books you get to read, but it always comes back to the right to choose our own path.

There is nothing worth losing our freedom of choice for and it is always worth fighting for our right to be who we want to be.

Not a Black and White Issue

Most stories always make this a very simple black and white issue. A government or villain or alien or corporation has taken away our right to choose our lives and everyone bows under the weight of their tyranny until someone rises up and fights back, winning the freedom of the people.

And I’ve always had a problem with this deep down in my gut. Because this issue is really anything but black and white and our stories deserve the complicated gray areas too.

I’m going to pick on Matched by Ally Condie for a minute because it highlights this problem perfectly. It’s also a pretty good book and I suspect the second book will be superior still. See, in the world of Matched, the government controls everything, but to a utopian end. By using technology and your own personality and reactions throughout your life (which of course is monitored constantly), the government can use a computer algorithm of patterns to pick your perfect match for you, saving you loads of time and effort. You don’t have to get married, but if you want to you’ll be matched to someone who will make you happy in every way. The government creates perfectly nutritionally balanced meals for each person and they are delivered to you pre-made at a designated time every day. You’re matched with the perfect job you excel at. Everyone has a home, food, medical care. Everyone is guaranteed to live to a certain age and then you’ll die a quiet, painless death surrounded by your friends and family. The available forms of entertainment are perfectly calibrated to your desires and what you are good at and what you will enjoy.

In exchange, you give up a degree of free choice. You accept the best the world can offer you and you don’t try things out for yourself. There are some people who fall outside the status quo who are relegated to crappy jobs like making the food for everyone else, but the majority of the population are perfectly, happily, average in every way.

Painfully Gray

Honestly, in the face of so many problems, both personal and global, that sounds pretty good most days. When I hear about youths beating and robbing strangers in giant flash mobs in Philadelphia with a kid as young as 11 arrested for helping to put a man in the hospital with a fractured skull for no better reason because they were bored – I can’t help but think maybe having less choice and more peace wouldn’t be so bad.

And this kind of thought can send people to riot, in and out of fiction. Just saying it out loud and I’ll have the torch and pitchforkers outside my door any minute. It practically makes me a villain.

Would I be able to freely give up books and movies and art except those deemed acceptable by a higher power?

Good god it would break my heart.

But I also think about those youth mobs, the riots in London, the natural disasters in poor places who still haven’t recovered because they have less money and it is easier to forget the suffering of people with less money. I think of New Orleans, Haiti, Mississippi. I think of grownups that kidnap kids and destroy their lives. I think of teenagers who commit suicide because of bullying and harassment. I think about poverty and hunger and I think about some of the kids at my husband’s high school whose parents are in jail, who’ve lived in multiple foster homes, with friends, in cars. I think about the ridiculously high divorce rate and my friends and family who spent $15,000-25,000 on their wedding only to see their marriage crumble less than 3 years later. I think about the obese, the sick, and the uninsured who can’t seek medical treatment because the cost is prohibitive and the poor who can’t eat healthy because it’s cheaper to eat crap food. I think about the wars and the terrorism and the political maneuvering at gun point in places like Darfur.

The Confusion of a Hero

I think about all these things, these many, colorful ways we impose intense suffering upon each other and that breaks my heart too. And I can’t help but wonder – is free choice that leads to all this suffering worth it? Is choosing what books to read and write and what art to enjoy or songs to sing or people to marry worth more than a world without all those other terrible things?

And if the hero or heroine fights to free the people from control so they can live in a world with more free choice but more suffering, what of the people who didn’t want to be “freed?” Is the protagonist still a hero if they just delivered people unwillingly into a world they didn’t want?

 

Is it selfish or heroic?

 

Who decides? The victims or those who agree with the protagonist?

 

And how gorgeous is the fiction where the good and evil sides are kind of confused?

 

That.

 

Because there are no easy answers. And there shouldn’t be.

 

It’s beautiful to be idealistic.

 

And villainous to play devil’s advocate.

 

Especially when both sides kind of have a point.

 

That is why dystopian fiction is so important, so relevant, so universal. Because the only way through the questions is by way of the hardest answers.

 

Why are we still obsessed with Dystopian fiction?

 Dystopian, News, the Good and Bad, Speculative Fiction, Stranger than Fiction  23 Responses »
Aug 292011
 

News from 2011:

Human Alterations and Phenomena
Disasters
Scary Nature
Medicine and Genetic Research
Invention
ROBOTS and Technology
End of the World

 

 

 

Is it starting to make sense now?

 

 

Love is in the air! (Also, zombies)

 Awesome Nerd Things, Zombies!  24 Responses »
Aug 252011
 

Happy Thursday zombie friends!

So, for a while I’ve been kind of, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for…ho-hum? How about boring? Can I meet your boring and raise you an idle and uninspired?

Well I’m getting my groove back and starting Monday I’ll be back to bringing you more College of Blogging posts, more writing posts, more inspiration and maybe just a little bit of awesome. What do you think? You guys all good with that? Next week I’m actually bringing back Hot Dystopian Summer Nights ! I’ll talk dystopian all next week and if you want to read what I covered last year, here’s a list of posts: Hot Dystopian Summer Nights 2010!

But first I must share with you one of the MOST WONDERFUL engagement announcement pictures ever by a lovely, inspiring couple from California. These pictures are spreading like wildfire across the internet, and the reason I am reposting them here is because the photographer has been so cute about them being posted everywhere. Photographer Amanda Rynda said in an interview here, “I can’t say I’m surprised. I think viral activity is part of the zombie nature, right?”

Tell me these are the best engagement photos ever?

And now, The End.

 My Life in Action, News, the Good and Bad, Things Worth Sharing  4 Responses »
Dec 312010
 

Last Christmas my city was buried by a snow storm that canceled the holiday. A few weeks later, J.D. Salinger died. Just before Valentine’s Day, the final book of the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay, was revealed and a thousand hearts exploded in anticipation. In March I traveled to Indiana to go hiking through the woods in order to discover the landscape of my novel and met John Green at a book signing in Indianapolis. In April bullying was the watch-word and authors, would-be-authors, and celebrities came out to tell their stories about bullying and to encourage kids not to let it define them or destroy them. I did too.

In May I switched from Blogger to WordPress and lost half of my graphics that I’m still trying to reconstruct in my archive. In June I experienced my first major burn out and my plot got lost on its way to chapter fourteen. I abandoned writing for several weeks just to feel normal again.

In July I hit up OSFest 2010 and wrote several extensive posts about character tropes which are what originally started luring new friends to my blog. I realized then I had something to share with the world.

I dedicated August to Hot Dystopian Summer Nights and wrote about some of my favorite books and genres. September was all about banned books and October I wrote every day about haunted things but embarrassed myself by calling it an October Blogfest but really meant a festival of blog posts. Whoops.

November was National Novel Writing Month and I started a new steampunk fantasy though I never hit 50,000 words. I wrote blog posts every day and cross-posted them over at Nathan Bransford’s forums where they were well received.

December I paraded out my Top 5 lists, caught the plague and wished for a swift death. I tried not to get buried beneath the shopping frenzy or be run over by psycho shoppers.*** I succeeded at one of these two things. Santa brought me The Mockingbirds and Anna and the French Kiss so 2011 will begin with some fine YA lit.

There were plenty of book contests out there. I gave away copies of Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, and lots of others. I won Morgan Matson’s Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour, Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell, Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers. I discovered Melina Marchetta and fell in love with words all over again. I met the wonderful Victoria Caswell and I never miss a post by Em and Nora at Love YA Lit, also The Story Siren, or Steph Su Reads.

I discovered that authors are like anyone else (Carrie Ryan, Courtney Summers, Saundra Mitchell, Kiersten White, Melissa Walker), but are also amazing, involved, grateful, lovely and so full of kindness I can hardly put into words but try to model myself after every day.

I read 73 novels, 80 if you include how many times I reread Jellicoe Road and The Sky is Everywhere. I think this says something about my dedication to reading, but I also think it says something about the quality of books that are being published these days, particularly in YA.

I discovered Nathan Bransford’s forums and the crazy personalities that populate its streets and I can honestly say I will never be the same person I was before I met them. They forced me, at linguistical gun point, to become a better thinker. My writing became deeper, more complicated, my characters more diverse and complex, and during those moments where I thought I was done, couldn’t go on, wasn’t even sure I still wanted to, there they were with a hanky and hot chocolate, kind words, naughty jokes, and giant emoticon eyerolls that said “Oh hell girl, we’ve all be there. And we’re all still here. You’ll be fine.” They might not mean anything to you, but the names Margo, Mira, Quill, Polymath, Watcher55, J.T. Shea, bcomet, and sierramcconnell and so many others will always stand out in my mind as people who helped me Take The Next Step, question myself, and speak up without fear of reprisal or derision. I. Am. In. Awe.

And now.

Now we come to the final days. These final hours. One more day is gone and I wonder how many people realize there is no going back. No reset button, no do-over. I wonder if the people who say, “I do not have time to write a novel today,” understand that tomorrow is just as temporary? I’m not very old, 31 is the new 21 and all that, but I can’t help but think – did I make the last year worth every last second? Did I waste any of it and if I did, why? It isn’t like we can get it back when it is gone. And I think – am I going to waste any moment of 2011? Will my novel go another year without being finished and why would I allow that to happen? We cannot get back the time we’ve spent and I believe that if we do not spend it well we do not really deserve it.

Did you spend it well? Will you spend it better?

No resolutions.+ This isn’t a competition when you are only competing against your own ability to make excuses. If I do not finish that novel this year, then why am I writing it? Go big or go home right?

2011 will be the year I get out of my own way.

—

*** True story – a friend of mine got cussed out in a parking lot when he got to a parking spot before another shopper. She then stalked him and tried to run him over after he came out. People never cease to amaze me.

+ I lied, there is one resolution. For two years I have made a resolution to learn how to sew a button and for two years I’ve put it off and avoided the Closet of Coats with Lost Buttons. No more! This year I will learn to fix my own bloody buttons or I’m switching out all my clothes to Velcro.

Inspiration Point #6: What Flavor is Your Dystopia?

 Book Covers, Dystopian, Inspiration Point, Theme Week  2 Responses »
Aug 272010
 

As a special Inspiration Point Friday, I’ve compiled a list of YA Dystopian novels of all shapes, sizes, colors, and hardships. There are plenty of corrupt governments, mind experiments, viruses, natural resource depletions, zombies, monsters, prisons, pirates, and bombs…some are very new, some haven’t been released yet, and some date back to the 1970s and yet still remain some of the best YA dystopias ever written.

Dystopias come in all flavors. So pick a flavor, any flavor. Which of these have you read? Any that I’ve missed? Share them in the comments!

There is something inspiring about survival.

 Dystopian, Topics in Writing  2 Responses »
Aug 262010
 

Why is dystopian fiction important? Or is it?

Earlier this week I spoke on why we are interested in dystopian fiction and why we like it so much, and the thing I kept coming back to was this: unlike utopian fiction, and historical fiction, and contemporary fiction, dystopian fiction is still possible. It will always come up in the cosmic tarot reading. Utopian fiction has its own problems of probability that dystopian fiction doesn’t, while historical fiction has already happened and contemporary fiction is currently happening. Everything that is taking place RIGHT THIS MINUTE can lead to the eventuality of the dystopian fiction. Follow any troubling thread and you will find a dystopia in one shape or another waiting at the other end.

Follow any of the headlines you discovered in the exercise from Monday and you will get conceivable, believable, possible futures that people are already fretting over with or without your fancy imagination. This isn’t a conspiracy theorists plot to instill panic: we’re facing economic and environmental disasters every day.

Dystopian Fiction Can Teach Us About Our Own Worst Selves

I believe, and please realize this is purely my own opinion, dystopian fiction serves a useful avenue to imagine and explore the darkest possibilities of our own future and the choices we may have to make one day. Granted, we’re probably not facing a zombie, robot, or vampire apocalypse anytime soon, but other possibilities? Sure.

Dystopian fiction serves as an early warning system.

It allows us to question the road we are already walking and not take for granted the possibilities that exist in front of us. By questioning and imagining and playing pretend between the comfortable, safe pages of a book, we can shape our attitudes and choices when/if the time ever comes.

If early Star Trek series can inspire technological design, function, and invention, than certainly dystopian fiction can inspire us to avoid the worst possible outcomes by changing our own attitudes and choices about the future.

A novel can teach us how to treat each other better in the event of a disaster or a serious change in society. If dystopias teach us anything, it’s that when push comes to shove, we as a species are pretty ready to shove each other off the side of a building before we share our last loaf of bread. A common theme in all dystopias is that during the worst possible days of our lives, human respect is the first thing we cut from the new bylaws of human experience.

Young Adults and the Dystopia Trend

If I’m right in saying that dystopian fiction can teach us about ourselves and about the dark roads of possibility ahead, than who better to speak these lessons to than young adults? They may not be in charge yet when society changes, but they are likely the ones who will have to lead afterward.

Maybe I’m reaching. Maybe dystopians can’t really teach us how to behave (or how not to behave) if and when society faces a terrible change. If that’s too lofty an idea, we can put that aside for a moment and look at another reason that is closer to our hearts as readers.

The surviving characters inspire us in ways that other characters from other genres are simply unable to do.

There is Something Inspiring about Survival

Millions of people all over the world have been holding their breaths in anxious anticipation of the final Hunger Games book by Suzanne Collins. At the time of this posting, Americans have had the book in their hot little hands for two days. Millions of Americans are going to have devoured the book before this post even hits the stands…and I’m one of them. Is the reason we want to know what happens in Mockingjay because we’re all shaking our Team Peeta! and Team Gale! signs and just want to see someone get kissed already?

No.

Not really.

The thing that has bred inside our hearts is not our insane desire to pick a kissing team. It’s because Katniss has become a girl we all want to be. In some way, we want to infect our hearts with her bravery, her courage, her loyalty, her insight, her creativity, her protectiveness, her ingenuity, her rebelliousness, and her inner fire.

When we see the world through Katniss’s eyes, we want to know that if anyone did to us what they did to her, we’d stand up for ourselves, our sisters, our family, our friends, and the one we love. We want to believe that these characteristics are not fictional. We want her to inspire us to greatness. We want to save the world.

(Ok yes, we also want our Team kiss to happen, but focus please!)

Lots of heroes and heroines from lots of genres inspire us, but few actually get to face the worst the world and triumph. Remember the definition of a dystopia? As Bad As it Can Be. Characterized by suffering, misery, overcrowding, famine…dystopia is the only place where things are required to be as bad as they can be and then we ask a character, boy or girl it doesn’t matter, to not just survive but to achieve self-actualization, human satisfaction, and maybe save the world if they’ve got time before the end of the book.

It sort of makes achieving self-actualization in our own lives a small task in comparison, right?

Hot Dystopian Summer Nights Schedule of Events

 Dystopian, Theme Week, Topics in Writing  11 Responses »
Aug 192010
 

I’d like to invite you all to discuss Dystopian Fiction with me next week while we all anxiously await the release of Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay on August 24th when the whole world stops working, feeding their kids, or getting out of their pajamas while they read the exciting and epic end to one really awesome series of books.

The schedule for Hot Dystopian Summer Nights is as follows:

August 23: What is dystopian fiction?

A post dedicated to defining the concept: What is dystopian fiction?


August 24: There is something romantic about survival.

Why do we like dystopian fiction?


August 25: How to torture your characters

How to write dystopian fiction.


August 26: There is something inspiring about survival.

Why is dystopian fiction important?


August 27: What flavor is your dystopia?

Pick a flavor, any flavor.


Hot Dystopian Summer Nights continues the next week starting August 30th with discussions and reviews of Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, followed by reviews of really great dystopian stories pulled from the list posted on August 27th. I will also have a Spoiler post on August 30th in which I will post a spoiler review of Mockingjay and all spoiler comments and discussions can go there. We don’t want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the book!

Come stop by, tell your friends, and definitely stick around to comment! It’s not a discussion if I’m the only one talking. (I just look like a know-it-all with no friends.)

I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of Mockingjay.