The state of the genre in 5 -4 -3 -2 -1-

 Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, Topics in Writing  9 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

A Rooted Culture

Dystopia: a world where things are as bad as they can be, often characterized by human misery and oppression.

Most people don’t go happily into the arms of oppression and misery. Our world has a long standing history of toppling empires and evil tyrants who try to pull that crap. To get to a dystopian world, you have to go through a lot of time, apathy, and despair. Big despair.

Despair that goes right down to the marrow of the world.

After a few generations of despair, you can’t take an ingrained ideal, a culture, a way of life, and change it over night. You can’t even convince a person that their way is wrong when it is the only way they’ve ever known. After a lifetime of being treated like they have no choice, like they can’t make their life better or they don’t deserve to have a better life in the first place, it’s not at all surprising when they don’t rise to action.

The Progression of Tension

 Dystopians and post-apocalyptic stories are a singularly special beast. Most stories start out alright, there’s a rise in dramatic tension, some major crisis, life gets bad, bad, very bad, and then climax and the aftermath brings the characters back to a place a little better than where they started. Not so for dystopians and post-apocalyptics. These stories start out nightmarish and then get worse.

It’s not so surprising that the plot of the dystopian novel very rarely revolves around fixing the thing that makes it dystopian in the first place.

The Problem of Happily Ever Apocalyptic After

Here’s a question for you, “Should dystopian novels have happy endings?”

When it comes to dystopians, are happy endings relative?

Is it satisfying for a post-apocalyptic world to be tied up in a neat little fluffy bow at the end of the story?

Can an ending that is not particularly happy still be the perfect ending?

Can a dystopian book still be a dystopian book if everything is all better in the end?

You can’t bring down the big bad government or wander the empty wasteland of Midwestern America in search of a home or do battle with a water-controlling corporation and tomorrow everything will be good again. The Very Bad Things are usually a symptom of the disease, the rotting core of society. The totalitarian government is able to exert control because the people are starving, there’s no electricity, no free communication, no water, no work, no money, no medicine, no identity, no dignity.

Do you all remember what the real world actually looked like in The Matrix? Even with the villain gone, there’s still a dystopian world to face. If the people of the world have been behaving lawlessly for generations, with the villain gone they won’t suddenly go, “Man, I need to settle down. Maybe buy a suit, get a job.”

It’s the problem of dystopian endings. At the end of the day, just after the words “The End,” the characters still have this messed up world with no water and not enough food and thugs, cannibals, zombies, and robots on every corner. Even if everyone is safe and loved at the end of the story, there’s still the tedium of tomorrow to face.

The Great Dystopian Romance

I’m uncomfortable with the trend in dystopian books to be thinly veiled romances and no so much with the grim and the desperate. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good romance. I mean, I’m not sure what I’m more excited about for the release of Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 – the chance to finally crush some aliens under my cute black boots or that I’ll finally be reunited with my love interest from the first game.

But I like my dystopians to be rough and mean and dangerous and hard and I like my characters, especially my strong girls, to stay focused and not get derailed for some make-outs just before the climax. There’s certainly nothing like danger to make a romance steamier, but when the world’s ending ladies, priorities!

Dystopian Cities (of the post-apocalyptic kind) are Death Traps

That’s the title of a blog post I wrote earlier this year over at Urban Psychopomp. Here’s an excerpt, read the whole thing here.

Or rather I should say when real cities stop functioning they become deathtraps, even if you aren’t writing a dystopian novel. See, cities are brilliantly designed to house lots of people in a very small space comfortably and safely. This has only been possible in the modern age because our engineers figured out ways to bring electricity and water in while flushing waste out. As long as everything is functioning, the system keeps us from swimming in filth and dodging disease, massive city eating fires, and squalor. And most people, from my experience, would very much like to avoid living in squalor.

Here’s the thing –we can live without electricity. We’d be miserable, but we can do it just fine. We can live without gas and we can live without waste removal.

What we can’t live without is water.

Depending on the temperature around you, the human body can only survive for as little as 2 days without water…. You can hope for ten days if it is very cold, but at those temperatures you have other things to worry about than running out of water.

So if a city has been destroyed and the world plunged into a dystopian landscape, where are people going to get their water? Cities are generally wall to wall concrete. There aren’t lakes in the middle of downtown Chicago. Once the standing water locations have been bled dry and all the bottled water ransacked from grocery stories, where will people go for water?

Who controls the water will ultimately always be a force to reckon with in dystopian fiction and this alone can provide an endless supply of conflicts for the writer. Will deals be struck? Will the water boss be neutral, good, or evil? What will it cost society for a glass of water and what will the characters do if they are cut off?

Water isn’t as sexy as zombie hordes or evil governments, but it can’t be ignored in survival fiction. It is the very essence of life, and two days of sitting still in the shade trying not to dehydrate is not a very exciting way for a character to die.

When faced with dehydration, what will your characters be willing to pay for one more glass of water ?

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What upcoming dystopian releases are you most excited for?

 

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?

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!

Official 13 District Blog Tour Schedule

 Book News, Dystopian, Things Worth Sharing  No Responses »
Aug 232010
 

There is an Official 13 District Blog Tour going on as promotion for the release of Mockingjay. I kind of knew this was going on, but I found so little information on what the different stops were and what was going on that I didn’t really jump on it until some of the contests were already over. Sorry guys! But just in case you haven’t heard about it all already, I have a schedule of stops posted below. Some of the contests are over, but not all! So go check them out, the posts are awesome! Also, some of these book bloggers are absolutely amazing, and I was excited to discover some new ones I’d never checked out before.

p.s. I’m a particularly BIG fan of Presenting Lenore, so if you click on no other blog below, please check her out! She’s simply lovely!

p.p.s Another reason to check out Presenting Lenore, she’s been doing Dystopian August with a ton of awesome posts and reviews on dystopian fiction. Run, don’t walk, over to her blog and say hi!!