Campaign For A Worse Tomorrow

So I've read The Hunger Games, Divergent, Delirium, Wool, Inside Out, The Bone Season, and recently Laline Paull's novel "The Bees." For the most part I've enjoyed them - but how do they stack up against the work of classic dystopian writers such as George Orwell or Suzy McKee Charnas?

What's not missing is some quality writing, with strong characters and intense settings. I think the opposite is true, this is a real strength of the genre right now and it's very clear , if only from the sales figures, that these books have been ensnaring and captivating new readers. So what's missing?

1. Originality While there are a lot of original concepts in all of the above books, there are also a lot of unoriginal ones: like the walled city, the fascist police, the rigid caste system, the unfair division of wealth, the outcast hero and of course the love affair that spans all boundaries. It all makes a good literary drinking game to play at your book group, but the result is a kind of create-a-dystopian-society-by-the-numbers. As if to prove the point, random YA dystopia generators have sprung up here and here.

It's a kind of laziness - save time developing your own backstory by referring to someone else's. To be fair it's not unique to this genre at all, it's something that occurs throughout literature. The result is a backstory that doesn't feel credible and doesn't connect to the real world. An exception is "The Bees" where the walled hive and the caste system make sense as the main characters are bees.

2. Social Commentary George Orwell's "1984" was driven by the development of Communism into a totalitarian state, and the fear that this could be the future of the world. "A Walk To The End Of The World" by Suzy Mckee Charnas is a feminist novel taking male oppression to a seriously extreme conclusion. While the new-ish wave does seem to care about class or wealth inequalities, these feel like easy targets but there's no real attempt to criticise or satirise present-day countries, societies, governments or political trends.

3. Hardcore suffering Kurt Vonnegut's famous advice to writers (summarised here) includes the following gem: "Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them, in order that the reader may see what they are made of." I'm not saying Katniss and the others don't suffer at all. But in all honesty I don't think she, Flora 717 or any of the new-wave heroes would last very long in Room 101.

4. Some curious omissions The Panem society, the Divergent scenario and many of the above settings, for all their fascist trappings, are surprisingly feminist. It's as if the overlords took a few years out of their plan to conquer and enslave the poor, in order to achieve total gender equality, apparently with minimum effort. Well done, dystopian leaders! Once again, "The Bees" is a notable exception.

So I propose to write a dystopia about a teenage girl growing up in a society where everyone is forced to read dystopian fiction from birth, who starts to suspect that, beyond the mysterious wall of dystopian books there might be some other mysterious reality, and who must pluck up the courage to lead a revolution so that her kin can enjoy (for example) Scandinavian detective novels. Cheers...

Infinite Number Of Monkees Part II: Moon Child

There is one reason I am willing to forgive Micky Dolenz for his creation of Metal Mickey and it is this.



Luna, first broadcast in 1983 is one of the strangest sci-fi series ever to be fired from a CRT gun towards a phosphate glass screen.

Where to start? The date is 2040. In the Efficicentre, possibly the last human city after some pollution apocalypse, cloned humans live together in randomly allocated family units. You will be "obliviated" if you lose your e-passport and Luna comes dangerously close to this fate in the first episode. "Technotalk" is spoken, a language not unlike Orwell's Newspeak but designed to be easier for computers to digest. And teapots are outlawed. It's a dark, dystopic, brightly coloured, child-friendly sitcom: the bureaucracy of Brazil and the sinister social control of 1984 meet The Wonder Years.

This show was one of the defining memories of my diminibeing years, yet for a long time I thought I'd dreamed it. While the series apparently still exists in archive, it's never been repeated or released.

Where can you watch it? You can't. Certainly not here.

I was extremely happy to see Luna again. Not everything has aged well - the wobbly old-school Doctor Who-style set for one, and some of the gags are equally wobbly. But I think you'll agree that Luna is still very watchable, and the tone, the essential weirdness and 72 Batch 19Y's indomitable spirit all shine through. With thanks to the Lunaviron fansite.

Am I Hot Or Not Part II [Review: Rate Me Red]

Richie Chevat's e-book Rate Me Red is a Brave New World to rival Blind Faith's 1984. It also describes a future extrapolated from today's Internet: again we have Facebook-style sharing and liking, together with a combination of YouTube vlogging and Second Life where your real-life clothes are cheap, but you then pay thousands of pounds more for your vid avatar to be seen wearing them.

Unlike Brave New World, where social mobility is zero and caste is defined before birth, Rate Me Red and Blind Faith describe futures where your social standing depends totally on your popularity – the Oranges and Yellows of Vidnet know that a chance encounter could precipitate a life-destroying chromofall at any time.

For the most part Vidnet society is a Machine Stops lifestyle - the novel follows hero Gordy through a real-life date and sexual encounter with his girlfriend Poppy, which is such a rare, shocking occurrence that it will surely boost both their ratings. The way everyone belongs to massive transnational corporations also reminded me of Max Barry's novel Jennifer Government, reviewed here.

You face a double humiliation in this future: not only must your every failure and embarrassment be made available to everyone over the net, but even worse – no-one’s actually watching it. In Blind Faith etiquette requires that you tell everyone how much you’ve enjoyed watching them argue or have sex, but of course no-one actually does because they’re self obsessed. In Rate Me Red you can’t actually keep up with all of your Twitter-style followers – so you buy a digital avatar who can do it for you, right down to replying to your e-mails.

Rate Me Red is bursting with ideas, from the ghetto-bound Blue underclass and mythical Purple untouchables to the pathetically intellectual Rejectionists. I particularly liked the idea that you couldn't be a success until you had a hate campaign against you - luckily Gordy's best friend is happy to oblige.

Neologisms TM have defined the dystopic fiction genre since 1984 and Clockwork Orange. They’re widely used here and while this is often effective there are a few misfires such as the constant referral to Real Life TM. This would be my only Criticism TM of Chevat’s writing – and on the other hand, perhaps because Chevat is also a playwright, the dialogue is particularly funny and well written, and the novel as a whole has a great pace. You can find out more or download the e-book from the author's website.

Am I Hot Or Not Part I [Review: Blind Faith]

Global warming meets Am I Hot Or Not by way of 1984 in Ben Elton's novel Blind Faith. The setting is a Facebook-style future following a rise in sea-level. Privacy and secrets are now perversions: you are required by law to share every aspect of your life. Consumerism, voyeurism and constant ratings are the norms, and there's a chatroom moderator in every block of flats constantly monitoring and interfering with your lives.

Elton uses this setting to tell a story that isn't really about Internet culture but about the rise of ignorance and celebrity obsession in general. Tabloid-style mob justice keeps everyone on their toes and there's a sinister populist religion that has taken advantage of the situation. In this future, the neonatal death rate has skyrocketed and the people have forgotten that it was not always so - a third of the way through, the story changes direction and follows a secret order who continue to provide children with vaccinations in a world where the ignorant population has rejected them as evil and unnatural.

This change in direction doesn't really help the narrative. Nevertheless the satire is spot on - the religious council that suddenly declares that everyone is now a celebrity, or the much repeated slogan "What's not to like?" are products of a society that is self-obsessed to delusional levels. I fully endorse the aims and methods of this novel, and it's an enjoyable satirical read if not quite on a par with Gridlock, Stark or Popcorn.

History Of The World - Part I

Time has run out - like an aircraft carrier falling from the crest of a tidal wave, 2012 has been released upon us. Time for a quick history lesson from the movies:

In 1,000,000 B.C. cavewomen were fighting dinosaurs and wearing rabbit-skin lingerie. By 10,000 B.C. teeth were the new rabbit-skins and mammoths were the new dinosaurs, but otherwise very little had changed. In 1492 Chris Columbus discovered America and the Round Earthers enjoyed a certain amount of social acceptance, and in 1941 America was saved from a Japanese invasion by a bunch of idiots. In 1969 it turned out that War was officially a bad thing however by 1984 we had forgotten this and were all in love with Big Brother.

2001 was of course the Dawn of Mankind and this had something to do with malfunctioning computers and black obelisks. Despite, or possibly due to those idiots in 1941, Japan never actually lost World War II and Korea never gained independence - until 2009 when the Korean resistance begins. Luckily in 2010 those monolith-loving aliens are back to sort everything out for humanity, at least until the world ends in 2012 as a direct consequence of the Mayan Calendar-Makers Strike. But it all ends well - by 2046 the world has been rebuilt as a supercity with some really cool trains.