Many naysayers have said lately that “dystopian fiction” is dead. Or even more incredulously, that it is past its prime. Let me tell you, neither of those is true.
How do I know this? A quick search of the Amazon Kindle store bestsellers top twenty list – these are the highest selling books in the entire store – shows one dystopian fiction novel and a fantasy novel with strong dystopian elements. Then there’s the popularity of other series where dystopian elements dominate – like Red Rising or Fourth Wing.
Dystopian isn’t dead. It’s just been repackaged.
Today’s dystopian reads are nothing like your dystopian books from high school. As much as I enjoyed 1984, Animal Farm, The Giver, or The Parable Of The Sower, today’s dystopian books have taken the best of other genres and woven that into the classic dystopian themes and settings from the classics.
Take the uber-popular Hunger Games series, for example. This series weaves in a coming of age story (a popular Young Adult Fiction plot device) with the action and adventure, bombs, and battles a reader of military sci-fi might expect, and the hopeful character brokenness and growth points from a women’s fiction novel.
Again, dystopian isn’t dead. It’s just been repackaged for a new generation of readers.
So, what’s coming for dystopian fiction?
While writing the Divided series, a young adult dystopian tale which puts America into a racially-divided future, I asked myself this same question.
I see modern day dystopian authors tackling issues at the edge of societal debate.
Issues like the use and ethics of AI — Murderbot series by Martha Wells, Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, or Emma Ellis’s Degrees of Freedom series.
Or the dangers of climate change on coastal cities — The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Claire Littlemore’s Flow Series, or The Thaw Chronicles by Tamar Sloan and Heidi Catherine.
And the effect of racism and division on our society — War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi, KA Riley’s The Resistance Trilogy, and my own Divided series.
Second, I see authors exploring the boundaries of ethics and science, using dystopian elements to weave in a prophetic warning to modern-day readers.
Works like Pierce Brown’s Red Rising come to mind in this category. Not specifically classed as young adult dystopian, Red Rising and the rest of the series portray a society rife with division and corruption, mirroring the first century Roman Empire, but woven into a Martian setting and a science fiction story.
Lastly, I see authors setting another type of story – a mystery, a paranormal romance story, or a thriller – inside a dystopian future. An example of this would be the mystery wrapped within a mysterious dystopia whose details are never shared — Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Or consider The Maze Runner, which is a closed-room mystery set in a dystopian future, at least until the cast finds a way out of the maze.
Dystopian fiction has evolved and changed, ending up in a place distant enough from the classics of high school reading lists to give us a break from the unrelenting negativity and terror of dystopian futures, while still maintaining the defining characteristics of the genre. And for that reason, dystopian fiction will always be in demand, even when life resembles a dystopia.
After all, don’t we want to see if we’ll survive what the future has in store for us?
Find CC at https://ccrobinsonauthor.com/writersafterdark to grab a special offer and to learn more about her.
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