![]() ![]() Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games novels (2008-2010), filmed: Ross and Lawrence 2012-15)ĭredd (Travis 2012), based on Judge Dredd strip (1979–) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005), filmed: (Romanek 2010) Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993) PD James, The Children of Men (1992), filmed: (Cuarón 2006) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), film (Schlöndorff 1990)Īlan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta (1988–9), film: (McTeigue 2006) ![]() ![]() Harry Harrison, Make Room! Make Room! (1966), filmed as Soylent Green (Fleischer 1973) Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) filmed as Blade Runner (Scott 1982) Between us, we concocted a list of novels and films, including:įrederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, The Space Merchants (1953)Īnthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962), filmed as Clockwork Orange (Kubrick 1971) William Gibson’s ‘The Gernsback Continuum’, which we read last semester, is a kind of compendium anti-utopia, while novels such as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) are – among other things – direct responses to the utopian vision of HG Wells, drawing out its more totalitarian elements, as does Metropolis (Lang 1927).ĭuring the 20th century, however, the explicit anti-utopia has given way to the proliferation of dystopias (dys + topia = bad place), dark, often satirical exaggerations of the worst aspects of our world. The dystopia emphasises bad aspects of our own world so as to make them more obvious (in this, they parallel the suburban world of All That Heaven Allows). The dystopia is not an explicit critique of the utopia, but a depiction of a world worse than our own – usually totalitarian, bureaucratic, brutal, dehumanising, and sometimes post-apocalyptic. This led us to anti-utopias – texts that are in more or less explicit dialogue with someone else’s utopian vision, exposing its darker, oppressive elements. We also noted the relative scarcity of utopian worlds in cinema – Just Imagine (Butler 1930), Things to Come (Menzies 1936) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Wise 1979) being potential examples, but all of them also demonstrating potentially negative elements and being susceptible to against-the-grain readings. We discussed the efflorescence of utopian fiction in the wake of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), and mentioned such key utopian authors as William Morris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson. Utopia has come to be understood as a description of an imaginary world organised according to a better principle than our own, and to frequently involve not-always-gripping systematic descriptions of economic, social and technical arrangements. When spoken aloud, the first syllable is a Latin pun on ou which means no and eu which means good (and topos means place) – so utopia means ‘no place’ but also suggests ‘good place’. Thomas More coined ‘Utopia’ 500 years ago this year. Both texts were framed in relation to the period’s culture of affluence and anxiety.īut first we began by placing Bradbury’s novel in relation to genre – specifically the interweaving traditions of utopia/anti-utopia, utopia/dystopia and US magazine sf. This week we continued our exploration of the US postwar suburbs ( see week 13), reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and watching Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (Siegel 1956). Conferences, keynotes, research presentations, plenaries and papers. ![]() Join 1,392 other subscribers Follow Mark Bould on Publications ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |