How Do You Define Dystopian?

Okay, so I've been attending a symposium on science fiction and fantasy, and I was asked to sit on a dystopian/utopian panel.

We spent a lot of time discussing what makes a novel a dystopia. There were a few of us on the panel, and we all had interesting things to say, some of which included:

• A society that includes "bad" things.
• A society in a post-apocalyptic world.
• A "closed" society--one that exists without any outside influence.
• A society that includes a overbearing government.
• A novel that includes social commentary.

I'm going to open it up to you. How do you define dystopia? 

Grammar of Old and New Worlds

True confession time. I’ve been watching Spartacus: Gods of the Arena on Netflix.  This is not Kirk Douglas’ Spartacus. This show is a guilty pleasure obviously designed to emulate 300, which, oddly enough, I wasn’t a big fan of.  The Starz channel production uses that bleak 300-esque cinematography and the same stylized stop-action, blood-flying-everywhere fighting. (It is about gladiators after all.) The style can get on your nerves after a while. However, for me, John Hannah and Lucy Lawless as the scheming owners of the ludus (the gladiator stable) make the show worth watching.  Think I Claudius (with a touch of Caligula) meets Gladiator. 

But I come not to praise Spartacus. What has really fascinated me about this show is its use of diction. (Didn’t see that coming did you?) You’ve got the usual stilted language that writers rely on to indicate you’re reading or watching something classical or high fantasy.  But the writers of Spartacus took it a step farther. They tweaked the grammar of English to emulate Latin. Just a bit. They dropped the articles.  Well, most of them. They really aren’t consistent about it, but they did it just enough to give the English the flavor of ancient Rome.  

Here’s a few PG-13 examples (there aren’t many of them) from Spartacus:

When has son denied father?

Man of ambition is capable of anything.

I will not die faceless slave forgotten by history.

This is but glorious beginning.

You get the idea.

Latin, you see, doesn’t have an equivalent to “the” or “a.” (Another true confession.  I took many years of Latin in school. I am geek. I am so geeky that I won the Latin project competition one year with my carefully crafted wax tablets. ) Latin is a very different language than English.  Latin is all about cases and endings, and the word order is flexible.  So, dropping the articles was the simplest way to give the English tripping off the tongues of the citizens of Capua a ring of Latin.

This strategy got me thinking about all the ways diction might be used to create the flavor of other worlds—either fantastic or futuristic.  Vocabulary is one way to do it. [Elana did a great post on slang a few weeks ago.] You get a great sense of the world from this bit from Clockwork Orange:

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Style is another.  You can definitely tell high fantasy from a noir detective story by the style of the language. For instance, it's a no brainer which one of these is from Lord of the Rings and which one is from Mildred Pierce:

“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”

"You think just because you made a little money you can get a new hairdo and some expensive clothes and turn yourself into a lady. But you can't, because you'll never be anything but a common frump whose father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing."

So, manipulating the grammar of the language can be a third way to create the feeling of a new world.  I don’t mean using bad grammar to indicate an incomplete grasp of our language. No, I mean changing the grammar or sentence structure of English to emulate an alien language or maybe a profound change in a human one. 

Think about how English has changed since Shakespeare or Chaucer's time. What's it going to be like 400 years from now--if we're speaking it all.  Or what would the language be like if we didn't have certain concepts anymore?

The only good example I can think of at the moment is Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney.  In that story, the humans learn a language that actually designed by aliens to be a weapon.  The language doesn’t contain words for “I” or “self,” which theoretically limits the speaker’s ability to think about those concepts (at least in that language).  This is the same idea as Doublethink in Orwell’s 1984.  If you reduce the words in the language, you limit the speaker’s ability to think about concepts outside their vocabulary.

Can you guys think of any other science fiction or fantasy works that have used some tweak in grammar as a world building technique?  What are some of your favorite works that use diction—slang and/or style—in a creative way?

Meet Your New Robot Overlord (on Jeopardy)

So have you guys been following the rise of our new robot master?

I refer of course to IBM's Watson computer that is now in the middle of a three game Jeopardy match with the two winningest players of all time, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

If you haven't been following, Watson is IBM's 5 years in the making super computer. The goal of Watson was to essentially make the ship's computer from Star Trek, a computer that can give direct answers to questions stated in normal conversational English. On the surface it sounds like it should be simple enough, right? A computer has access to way more information than the average human and is tops when it comes to sifting through data quickly. Turns out though that more often than not it isn't having info that's Watson's problem. The clues on Jeopardy, like all language, are full of subtle meaning, irony, riddles and other linguistic complexities make teasing out the meaning of the question the biggest trick for the computer. Unless Watson understands what's being asked, it can't answer.

As an example, one question was,"From the Latin for end, this is where trains can also originate." Jennings gave the correct answer, "terminus." Watson answered wrong with "finis." Basically the computer saw the part about "From the Latin for end" which seemed to call for a cut and dried translation and missed the deeper, trickier meaning of the question.

Ultimately, I think the effort to make machines that match the abilities of humans only serves to make it clear how amazing we actually are and, honestly, how little we have to fear from a robot uprising. Watson  cost billions and took years to build. It is made up of ten server racks holding 90 servers and 2800 processor cores giving it the computing power of about 2800 very advanced computers. And with all that power in can hold it's own with folks sporting a mere 3 pounds of squishy gray matter.  Go team human!

(Keep in mind, I'm writing this Tuesday night and the final match is Wednesday. It's entirely possible that on Wednesday night, Watson trounces the humans, achieves self awareness and launches WWIII, killing us all and completely invalidating this blog post.)

So what do you guys think? Is trying to make machines in our own image a fool's game? Can we ever really make something that's smarter than us? Should we?

Jeff Hirsch

The Eleventh Plague

Coming from Scholastic, September 1, 2011

Find me at jeff-hirsch.com and @jeff_hirsch

Tech Tuesday - A Visit to the Dentist!

Normally one would expect a Sci-Fi/Dystopian blog to deal with the future. But... one can't always see the future without a look at the past. And... this morning, I'm going to the dentist! (YAY!!!... uh... NOT!)

This is an interesting look at the history of dentistry - along with several interesting pics of various instruments of torture the trade used over the years.

http://www.namibiadent.com/History/HistoryDentistry.html

If you'd a mind to laugh about a trip to the dentist, you might want to check out Bob Hope in The Paleface. He plays "Painless" Peter Potter, a correspondence school dentist.

What will going to the dentist be like in the future? Here's a look at research on re-growing tooth enamel.

http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog/2011/01/03/visiting-the-dentist-chair-of-the-future/

Dentistry advances in my lifetime have gone from drills that felt like they belonged in a tool shop to relatively painless laser technology. I do wonder what's coming down the pike. But, for now... I have a pretty good idea!

I do hope your day starts out better than mine!

Brush, floss, rinse, repeat! 

Love at the End of the World

One of the reasons why I like dystopian fiction is because it makes all the emotions people normally have seem more vivid and real. Take a real-life dystopian and consider how much more deeply we appreciate the emotions the people have: Anne Frank's budding love for Peter, or the strong familial love they share.

When terrible things are happening in the world around us, it's nice to know that we can still feel--and believe in--love. I think that's the greatest power we have as humans.

So today I'm gonna get a bit mushy on you--after all, if I can't get mushy on Valentine's Day, when can I?--and tell you some of my favorite dystopian love stories.

I'm going to start with THE HUNGER GAMES. But I'm not picking this one for the reason you think. I know people were all split about Team Gale or Team Peeta or whatever, but to me the real love story was Katniss's family. Remember: the entire reason Katniss joined the Games was to protect her sister, Prim. And the relationship between Katniss and her mother fascinated me--it was so realistically broken, but also with hints of how different it could have been in a different world.

Can you imagine what kind of person Katniss would have been if she hadn't been from Panem? Can you imagine what sort of joyous, wonderful family she would have had?

That's the real heartbreak of the story for me. That the family was destroyed by the world they existed in.

But then again--the love survived. Katniss's love for Prim was the theme that carried all three novels. And I won't spoil MOCKINGJAY for those of you who've not read it yet, but I'll just say this: that damn cat made me cry.

I'm also going to add Carrie Ryan's THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH to my list of "love-dystopian-books," but again: not for the reason you think. Because while I DO think that Mary's love triangle is beautifully written (and the way a love triangle SHOULD be, where there's reasons and consequences for both boys), the things that I'm left with most isn't the love triangle.

It's the love Mary finds for her world.

Even though Mary's world is torn apart by zombies, even though she is surrounded by death and ugliness and horror--she still finds something beautiful in her world. She still finds something worth seeing. She doesn't give up on herself or her life--she still seeks the value of the world around her.

THIS is what makes Mary a strong character, in my opinion--that even as the world dies, there is something beautiful that still remains in it.

OK, OK, fine. All you romantics are probably shouting at me by this point because my list of love-in-a-dystopian-world books has yet to focus on romantic love.

I give you: DELIRIUM.

If you're a romantic at heart, this is the book for you. This is a world where love is eliminated as a dangerous disease, and where people literally cut the part of them that feels from their brains.

What I loved most about the main character, Lena, is that despite the fact that she lives in a world where love is feared and reviled and thought to be a disease that kills--she still falls in love. It creates a nice allusion to the way love really is: that it's a scary, dangerous thing, something that can hurt and even, yes, kill, but still worth it when it's real.

And finally, I'm going to mention Veronica Roth's debut: DIVERGENT. Please don't shoot me that you have to wait for this one to come out--because trust me, you want it now.

DIVERGENT is about a world that's run by factions that value certain traits: strength, truth, wisdom, humility. And it's about a girl trying to find her place in this divided world. It's very kick-butt, fast-paced, lots of blood and fighting and death.

But it's also a love story.

And yeah. I'm gonna throw you for another loop. Because although I love the love story between Tris and her man (no spoilers), I love even more the love story between Tris and herself.

Throughout the course of the novel, Tris is trying to figure out who she is, what she stands for, what she's willing to fight for, and what kind of person she wants to be. And although it's not really a conscious thing for her, she grows to appreciate and love herself for exactly who she is. She starts out wishing she could be one thing or another, but by the end she realizes that she's great the way she is.

So there you have it! For Valentine's Day, my book recommendations are a story where a girl loves her family, one where she loves her world, one where she risks everything for true love, and one where she discovers a love for herself.

What about you? What's your favorite romantic tale?

Using Fear To Create A Dystopian World

Okay, so we know that a lot of writers use their personal experiences in their fictional works. And if you didn't know that, well, now you do. (Of course, this is not always true, but there is a piece of each author, I believe, in everything they write.)

For me, I use my fears to create a scary dystopian world. Maybe fear isn't the right word. I think about things I'd really rather not live without, and then take those away in my society.

For example, I love to take really long, hot showers. So, in my world, shower time is regulated to five minutes, and five minutes only. The temperature of the water is decided for you, and it never varies.

For me, that would suck. I'm hoping that readers will think so too; that I can use something as simple as a shower to make a connection.

I've seen this used in other dystopian works I've read. Let's look at THE MAZE RUNNER by James Dashner. He creates an immediate sense of world--and suckage--by having Thomas lose his memory. Isn't that something we're all afraid of? Not remembering what we need to remember? Have you ever felt frustrated when you couldn't remember?

It's an instant connection. And a terrifying one.

Another device I see used a lot is the idea of a fence, or a wall. I've been blogging about it a lot on my personal blog, but I love fences/walls/barriers. To me, they symbolize fear. This thought of "There's something bad out there."

I saw a fence in DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver, a wall in BIRTHMARKED by Caragh M. O'Brien, social walls in SHIPBREAKER by Pablo Bacigalupi, a fence in THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins, nothing but walls in the space ship in ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis.

Walls are caging, confining. And who likes feeling like that? Using fear to make a connection helps in dystopian world-building, and it establishes an emotional connection from the reader to the story.

I'm all about the fear.

What do you think? What do you love that if taken away, would really stink? Could you write that into a dystopian novel? What have you read in dystopian fiction that you thought, "Wow, this world sucks. Wouldn't want to live without [fill in the blank]."?

2012 Debut Dystopians

Most of us here at the League are Elevensies, that is we’re part of a community of YA/MG authors debuting this year. Next year’s group of debs has already started forming, and you’re going to love their name: the Apocalypsies. (You know, the whole 2012, world-coming-to-an-end thing.)

Anyway, I was browsing through their site, and I noticed that there are quite a few dystopian titles coming out next year. (Coincidence?) Here’s a few of them by our fellow debs:

The Other Life By Susan Winnacker
Marshall Cavendish, Spring 2012

From Goodreads:

Sherry and her family have lived sealed in a bunker in the garden since things went wrong up above. Her grandfather has been in the freezer for the last three months, her parents are at each other’s throats and two minutes ago they ran out of food.

Sherry and her father leave the safety of the bunker and find a devastated and empty LA, smashed to pieces by bombs and haunted by ‘Weepers’ - rabid humans infected with a weaponized rabies virus.

While searching for food in a supermarket, Sherry’s father disappears and Sherry is saved by Joshua, a boy-hunter. He takes her to Safe-haven, a tumble-down vineyard in the hills outside LA, where a handful of other survivors are picking up the pieces of their ‘other lives’. As she falls in love for the first time, Sherry must save her father, stay alive and keep Joshua safe when his desire for vengeance threatens them all.

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows
Katherine Tegan/Harper Collins Winter 2012

From Goodreads:

About the only girl who is new in a world where everyone is perpetually reincarnated, and her quest to discover why she was born, and what happened to the person she replaced.

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Harper, Winter 2012

From the Publishers Marketplace announcement:

… about forbidden lovers from radically different societies - following a girl banished from her enclosed, technology-bound city out into the deadly natural world, where she encounters a savage boy who becomes her only chance to survive and return home…

Cybernetic by Laura Riken
Disney Hyperion, Summer 2012

From Goodreads:

Cybernetic is the first in a young adult dystopian series about a 16-year-old girl who lives in a walled city surrounded by bloodthirsty beasts, also threatened by rival armies of cybernetic soldiers who want to enslave humanity. Cybernetic is tentatively set for publication in the summer 2012 by Disney-Hyperion.

I hope I didn't miss anyone. Not every Apocalypsies' book description is online yet, so there may be even more dystopia on its way next year.



What dystopian titles (debut or repeat offender) are you looking forward to  next year? Or even late this year? (Ours go without saying, btw.)

A LATE ADDITION TO THE LIST!

Glitch by Heather Anastasiu
St. Martins, Summer 2012


From her website:

Seventeen-year-old Zoe Gray is a cybernetically-enhanced teenager living in an underground society when her internal hardware begins to malfunction. She slowly realizes that her body is changing, that she’s developing powerful telekinesis, and that she’s not alone. Even though getting caught could mean reprogramming, or worse, deactivation, Zoe begins to seek out other glitchers in society, including a dreamer named Adrian who can see the future, a boy named Max who can mimic other’s appearances, and a young girl named Molly with X-ray vision. They work together to plan their escape, but soon learn there is another powerful faction at work whose ambitions threaten all their carefully laid plans.

Thanks for pointing it out in the comments!