Episode 31: Getting out of the Utopia/dystopia binary
This bizarre Apple Computer ad from 1984 does an excellent job evoking the novel 1984, in the service of selling you an expensive computer. Branding!
We're living in an age of dystopian stories, while real-life social issues are getting pretty dystopian too. What's the point of telling dark stories in a dark time? Also, we discuss how Utopian stories and dystopian stories are actually quite similar -- just two opposite extremes -- and how the best science fiction exists in the nuanced gray area between the binary poles. Plus: what stories are giving us hope right now?
Works Cited & Etc.
Thomas More, Utopia. You can read the 500th anniversary edition for free, edited by Stephen Duncombe
Hunger Games series, by Suzanne Collins
1984, by George Orwell
The Handmaids Tale, by Margaret Atwood (TV series created by Bruce Miller)
Walking Dead, original comic by Robert Kirkman; TV series developed by Frank Darabont
Green New Deal: original document from OAC and analysis from the NYT’s Lisa Friedman
Black Mirror, created by Charlie Brooker
A great article on the BBC website by Jane Ciabattari about Frodo Lives buttons and Hobbit counterculture in the 1970s
Iain M. Banks’ Culture series
Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow
Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Ammonite, Nicola Griffith
Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers’ series
The Uninhabitable Earth, by
Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer “emotion picture” video
Death in Ten Minutes, by Fern Riddell
W.E.B. DuBois first described the idea of “double consciousness” in an article for The Atlantic, published in 1897. It reappears in his essay collection The Souls of Black Folk.
The Expanse, created by James S.A. Corey
Harlots, created by Alison Newman and Moira Buffini
Get Out, dir. Jordan Peele
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Broken Earth series, by N.K. Jemisin
The Wrong Stars, by Tim Pratt
Tensorate series, by J.Y. Yang
The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Reenu-You, by Michele Tracy Berger
Warcross, by Marie Lu