Dystopia

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A dystopia is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.^[2] It is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. The opposite of Utopia.^[3] The term dystopia comes from the Ancient Greek dus ('bad') and tópos ('place') and is also called a cacotopia^[4] or anti-utopia. While dystopia is commonly seen as the opposite of utopia—a concept coined by Thomas More in 1516 to describe an ideal society.

Dystopias are often characterized by fear or distress,^[5] tyrannical governments, environmental disaster,^[6] or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Themes typical of a dystopian society include: complete control over the people in a society through the usage of propaganda and police state tactics, heavy censoring of information or denial of free thought, worshiping an unattainable goal, the complete loss of individuality, and heavy enforcement of conformity.^[7] Despite certain overlaps, dystopian fiction is distinct from post-apocalyptic fiction, and an undesirable society is not necessarily dystopian. Dystopian societies appear in many fictional works and artistic representations, particularly in historical fiction, such as A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens, Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz, and A Man for All Seasons (1960) by Robert Bolt, stories set in the alternate history timelines, like Robert Harris' Fatherland (1992), or in the future. Famous examples set in the future included Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World (1907), Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1920), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, or technology. Some authors use the term to refer to existing societies, many of which are, or have been, totalitarian states or societies in an advanced state of collapse. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, often make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system.^[8]