George Orwell’s "1984" was so successful and so influential that he was seen as something of a prophet. This dystopian novel was considered a cautionary prophecy of what would come to pass if future generations ceased to be vigilant in the guarding of their freedom. Someone to claim us, someone to follow Someone to shame [...]
A remnant from the late ‘20s, “Metropolis” has come into the light once again and in a more complete way. While the industrial environment and modern work have changed, the concern for social justice and questions about technology are just as intense as they were when the film premiered. In a search for movies considered [...]
Good fiction deals with powerful themes and does so by embedding them in the plot line and character arc—so the word becomes flesh. This is the power of great drama and fiction: that we get caught up in the story and the emotion opens our heart, and as our heart is opened so is our [...]
The week after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress. He gave in many respects an eloquent and well-crafted speech. It set down with considerable skill the meaning of the attacks and reasons to launch the war on terrorism. Nonetheless, the President made few references [...]
The totalitarian State wants to control all; it wants to own all that is human, and this includes the erotic, the sexual, and the romantic. By suppressing and controlling these elements in men and women, it hopes to obtain complete domination over every aspect of their humanity... With the publication of Brave New World in [...]
Here’s the scenario: As the culture of death destroys itself in its auto-cannibalistic self-consumption, millions begin to flock to the Faith. In the very death throes of decadence, Christ and His Church rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes… I have a deep admiration for successful novelists. I don’t mean “successful” in the worldly sense but in [...]
In modern America, all the dystopian horrors exist hand-in-hand with what seems like one perpetual theme-park existence. The war, torture, abortions, castrations, murders, suicides, drug addiction, homelessness, and medical horrors reside side-by-side with the smiling face of America, where everyone has perfect teeth and waves out a cheerful, “Have a nice day!”… Having just re-read [...]
Aldous Huxley cautions modern folk, who think or assume that they can continuously redefine or reconstruct primary forms of human relationship without risk, that their actions may lead to unintended, unanticipated, and unwanted consequences… Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Rallying the Really Human Things by Vigen Guroian (325 pages, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2005) The theme of Brave [...]
This short series on dystopian literature has been a guide and little more. A longer analysis would do justice to a number of authors who deserve to be studied. The great Kurt Vonnegut offered the darkest of satire when exploring governments gone terribly wrong in Player Piano (1952), Mother Night (1961), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and [...]
Of contemporary thinkers, no one engages the essence of dystopia more than the Canadian author and professor, Margaret Atwood. She is, unquestionably, one of the most important women of letters, offering social and cultural criticisms in the vein of George Orwell and Russell Kirk. As with Orwell and Kirk, Atwood does not easily fit into a category. [...]
An American original, Ray Bradbury, will enjoy a high reputation for centuries to come. The future will remember him for hundreds of short stories and at least four profound novels: Fahrenheit 451; The Martian Chronicles; Something Wicked this Way Comes; and Dandelion Wine. Though Bradbury never set out intentionally to discuss dystopia or utopia, each [...]
Though gorgeously written in its own right, 1984 also benefitted from the timing of its release, at the very end of the Second World War and at the beginning of the Cold War. Though a delusional love affair existed between the West and the Soviet Union in 1943, disillusionment and reality set in in the few [...]
Most who remember C.S. “Jack” Lewis (1898-1963) remember him as the author of the seven Narnia books as well as a host of works of Christian apologetics, such as The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Great Divorce (1945), and Mere Christianity (1952). Few, however, remember his science-fiction trilogy, his vast literary criticism, or his somewhat archaic [...]
Despite his blistering attacks on all forms of socialism in his fiction, many scholars have considered George Orwell a socialist. Yet his leftism was merely “by accident,” a reaction against the commercialism and crassness of the Western world of his day. Unlike the first two British dystopian writers, George Orwell was a colonial, born in [...]