Re: Stories for James Nicoll's Nightmarish Future

Jonathan L Cunningham wrote: 
James A. Donald <jamesd@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


   --
Jonathan L Cunningham:

Forget the protagonist: is _Brave New World_ a utopia
or a dystopia? Why?


1.  It is a dystopia because it is a thorough going
hellhole.



That's a repetition, not an explanation. "It is a hellhole because it is
a thorough going dystopia."

I know *I* wouldn't want to live there, but ...


2. It is a dystopia because the inhabitants have had
their minds cut down to like it.


Cut down? Or sharpened?

They use a drug called SOMA, to take away the pain of their regimented lives. Somebody else plans their lives, decanting to grave, and then takes appropriate steps to ensure they follow the plan.

No matter how imperfect, I want to follow my own plan. It's the edges of society where somebody else tells me how to live, and where what I want to do things that harm no others, yet am not allowed to do, that makes the country I live in dystopic. So, for me, control of personal liberty is a first evil, and taking advantage of the large percentage of people who think that the way it is, is the right way, is the second.

Decanting people from bottles doesn't even place, if it's personal choice instead of manufacturing people. I think BNW was written after examining an ant heap.

Bill 

The whole point of the question is not to ask "Do I like it?" but "Why
not?" And I'm seeking world-building answers, not slogans.

Jonathan 
OK,

I don't think there is such a thing as a earthly utopia. People always bring down their own troubles. All of the novels that are called utopias, are dystopias. They may look, on the surface, like a wonderful place, but the whole point of that sort of milieu novel is to unfold for the reader just what is wrong with a particular kind of "utopia". They are, ASFIK, always social commentary.
That said, I'm curious just what mechanism people are using to separate utopia from dystopia.

--
Bill Swears

Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic!  How cool is that?
.

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