How to Read Utopias and Dystopias

While you might read many utopian works as works of science fiction, much of the utopian genre forgoes more familiar narrative conventions. In this sense, many of the classic works of utopian literature emphasize worldbuilding over and above narrative, often to a fault. Dystopias and heterotopias employ more complex narrative structures, and while worldbuilding is still a conspicuous element, character and plot are foregrounded. In any case, texts in this tradition inspire critical thinking about our socio-political realities and how we might change those realities. With that major similarity in mind, let’s take a look at the different ways we read utopias, dystopias, and heterotopias.

Utopias

Setting is obviously central to the great utopias. Usually these settings are Earth-bound, especially in the classical tradition of utopian texts, texts that served more as political primer than tale of adventure. Some utopias are placed on other planets, yet few seem to be placed into fantasy worlds; this may reflect the function of utopia, which all too often plays an active role in real-life social transformations. Because utopias explore foreign lands, they take as their model the travelogue—the journal, diaries, or other recountings of a voyage by the protagonist. In the utopian genre, rather than traveling to some foreign and distant land, the protagonist travels to some form of a better society. In later versions, the protagonist details an account of time travel. The travelog convention even serves to organize and frame modern day utopias such as Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (1975).

Travel serves as the framework for the text, but the bulk of the content is usually dominated by an expository and didactic style. An expository style focuses on the explanation of an idea or concept rather than, say, character development or suspense. Similarly, a didactic style aims to teach the reader something. It is precisely in this sense that many utopias read more as political treatises than as works of literature. Like actual political treatises, which are in communication with each other, utopian works critique each other to tinker together a perfect world.

State Dystopias

Classic state dystopias, like utopias, also tend to be set on Earth, future or contemporary. Unlike utopias, state dystopias tend to have a more pronounced narrative, one that tends to focus intently on the point of view of a single character. Like the travelog, they often take the form of journals and diaries, but unlike the travelog, the protagonist does not travel; they write from within the dystopian society. In many cases, the protagonist suffers unimaginable tragedy; just as the protagonist feels alienated by the socio-political structures that surround them and determine their lives, the reader is directed as to how to feel about these systems, to imagine what it is like to truly live within some “perfect” system. In this sense, we might say that state dystopias achieve affectively—through emotional affect—what classical utopias achieve didactically.

Despite the reader being attached to the terror and alienation of the protagonist, the dystopian is still meant to generate critical thinking about social and political systems. Critical thinking means first and foremost to question one’s own presuppositions, something that the more naive utopian works never do. Dystopian works, conversely, work to point out the presuppositions of such naive utopianism, in this way creating negative utopian content; dystopia is the reverse side of the utopian coin. Unlike SF, state dystopias should not be read as speculative; they do not seek to predict a future; rather, they describe ominous realities in exaggerated form.

State dystopias also focus on the machinery of industry, technology, and mass media. In the early 20th century, the world saw rapid changes to living conditions, and for the first time in history, more people lived in the city than in the countryside; with it came crime and poor living conditions. Every form of industry—agricultural, automotive, shipping, manufacturing, chemical— was transformed, but with them came pollution, exploitation, and the time clock. Technology allowed people to communicate across vast distances, but also threatened to alienate people from each other; rather than speak, they listened to the radio and watched TV. Chemistry changed lives, producing a host of life-saving and life-changing medications with horrible, addictive side-effects. New media emerged—radio, TV, then the Internet—but the proliferation of information proved time and time again to be susceptible to propaganda and cognitive bias. These anxieties are what state dystopias explore, anxieties explored further in the “Spotlight” section later in this chapter.

Heterotopias

Heterotopias are the result of the diffusion of the utopian and dystopian impulses into science fiction more generally. Thus many of the narratives take on well-known SF forms. Many heterotopian works take on interplanetary and intergalactic scope, whereas the traditional utopias and dystopias tend to be Earth-bound. Iain Banks’ Culture series imagines a galactic utopia, for example, while Frank Herbert’s Dune series imagines a galactic dystopia. Both of these works exhibit, respectively, strong utopian and dystopian impulses, even if the narrative focus is not always on the creation of a utopian/dystopian space. While the classical and state utopias might be said to be thought-experiments, most people would likely call the intergalactic stories mentioned above some version of space opera.^[1] Many dystopian works fit neatly into the post-apocalyptic subgenre of SF, as in the case of works such as Hugh Howey’s Silo series..

Heterotopian texts rely on techniques which create feelings of ambivalence and ambiguity (uncertainty) to induce critical thinking. When utopias are presented, they are critiqued in such a way that romanticization of the idealized society becomes impossible. Dystopian texts often create ambiguity because of the inherently forward-looking and hopeful nature of SF itself; thus even the most dystopian post-apocalyptic text, for example, points toward the utopian possibility of overcoming the dystopian conditions of the world. Many heterotopian texts are meta-texts that contemplate deeply the very features of their production. In this sense, these heterotopias include a heavy dose of satire and parody.

Manifestos and Treatises

Even though real-life utopias aren’t literary, they often leave behind a literary record in the form of nonfiction texts that argue for or demonstrate an ideal society in some form. To varying degrees, these manifestos and treatises have had profound effects on actual society. People have organized communes, fought revolutions, and reorganized entire societies based on these writings. Because they are polemical, many often take the form of a manifesto. It is here that the inherently polemical nature of the utopian tradition is most apparent. Utopian manifestoes range from the sincere to the sardonic. In almost every instance, a manifesto includes a call-to-action.