Utopian and dystopian fiction
Encyclopedia
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia
, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare
world, or dystopia
. Many novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction
and other speculative fiction
genres, and arguably are by definition a type of speculative fiction
.
More than 400 utopian works were published prior to the year 1900 in the English language
alone, with more than a thousand others during the twentieth century.
. The word utopia resembles both the Greek words "no place", "outopos", and "good place", "eutopos". In his book, which was written in Latin
, More sets out a vision of an ideal society
. As the title suggests, the work presents an ambiguous and ironic projection of the ideal state. The whimsical nature of the text can be confirmed by the narrator of Utopia's second book, Raphael Hythloday. The Greek root of Hythloday suggests an 'expert in nonsense'. An earlier example of a Utopian work from classical antiquity
is Plato
's The Republic, in which he outlines what he sees as the ideal society and its political system
. Later examples can be seen in Samuel Johnson
's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
and Samuel Butler
's Erewhon
, which nearly spells 'nowhere' backwards. This, like much of the utopian literature, can be seen as utopian satire
which is most notable in the inversion of illness and crime which Butler portrays, with punishment for the former and treatment for the latter.
Dystopia
s usually extrapolate elements of contemporary society and are read by many as political warnings. Many purported utopias reveal a dystopian character by suppressing justice, freedom and happiness. Samuel Butler
's Erewhon
can be seen as a dystopia because of the way sick people are punished as criminals while thieves are cured in hospitals, which the inhabitants of Erewhon see as natural and right, i.e. utopian (as mocked in Voltaire
's Candide
.) Aldous Huxley
's novel Brave New World
is a more subtle and more threatening dystopia because he projected into the year 2540 industrial and social changes he perceived in 1931, leading to a fascist hierarchy of society, industrially successful by exploiting a slave class conditioned and drugged to obey and enjoy their servitude. George Orwell
's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
is a dystopian novel about a coercive and impoverished totalitarian society, conditioning its population through propaganda rather than drugs. Margaret Atwood
's The Handmaid's Tale
describes a future North America governed by strict religious rules which only the privileged dare defy.
's Gulliver's Travels
is sometimes linked with utopian (and dystopian) literature, because it shares the general preoccupation with ideas of the good (and bad) society. Of the countries Lemuel Gulliver
visits, only the Country of the Houyhnhnms approaches a utopia; most of the others have significant dystopian aspects.
Many works combine elements of both utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer from our world will journey to another place or time and see one society the author considers ideal, and another representing the worst possible outcome. The point is usually that the choices we make now may lead to a better or worse potential future world. Ursula K. Le Guin
's Always Coming Home
fulfils this model, as does Marge Piercy
's Woman on the Edge of Time
. In Starhawk
's The Fifth Sacred Thing
there is no time-travelling observer, but her ideal society is invaded by a neighbouring power embodying evil repression. In Aldous Huxley
's Island
, in many ways a counterpoint to his better-known Brave New World
, the fusion of the best parts of Buddhist philosophy
and Western technology is threatened by the "invasion" of oil companies.
In another literary model, the imagined society journeys between elements of utopia and dystopia over the course of the novel or film. At the beginning of The Giver
by Lois Lowry
, the world is described as a utopia, but as the book progresses, the world's dystopian aspects are revealed.
's Ecotopia is an important 20th century example of this genre, as is the California trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
. Robinson has also edited an anthology of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
. The novel The Bridge (1973) by D. Keith Mano presents a world dominated by a global environmental fascism, where the government ultimately promotes the extinction of the human race by enforced mass suicide, so as to 'save' the environment.
Other examples include the Uplift Series by David Brin
wherein ecotopian value systems and their implications are explored in a fictional galactic society.
. Writer Sally Miller Gearhart
calls this sort of fiction political: it contrasts the present world with an idealized society, criticizes contemporary values and conditions, sees men or masculine systems
as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as equal to or superior to men, having ownership over their reproductive functions
. A common solution to gender oppression or social ills
in feminist utopian fiction is to remove men, either showing isolated all-female societies as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman
's Herland
, or societies where men have died out or been replaced, as in Joanna Russ
's A Few Things I Know About Whileaway, where "the poisonous binary gender" has died off. Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time
keeps human biology, but removes pregnancy and childbirth from the gender equation by resorting to artificial wombs, while allowing both women and men the nurturing experience of breastfeeding
.
Utopias have explored the ramification of gender being either a societal construct or a hard-wired imperative. In Mary Gentle
's Golden Witchbreed, gender is not chosen until maturity, and gender has no bearing on social roles. In contrast, Doris Lessing
's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
(1980) suggests that men's and women's values are inherent to the sexes and cannot be changed, making a compromise between them essential. In My Own Utopia (1961) by Elizabeth Mann Borghese, gender exists but is dependent upon age rather than sex — genderless children mature into women, some of whom eventually become men.
Utopic single-gender worlds
or single-sex societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have been imagined to come about by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenic reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by feminist writers. Many influential feminist utopias of this sort were written in the 1970s; the most often studied examples include Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Suzy McKee Charnas
's Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time
. Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included equality between sexes, rather than separation. Such worlds have been portrayed most often by lesbian or feminist authors; their use of female-only worlds allows the exploration of female independence and freedom from patriarchy
. The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all — Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a famous early example of a sexless society. Charlene Ball writes in Women's Studies Encyclopedia that use of speculative fiction to explore gender roles has been more common in the United States than in Europe and elsewhere.
's work Travels in Icaria caused a group of followers to leave France in 1848 and travel to the United States to found a series of utopian settlements in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, California, and elsewhere. These groups lived in communal settings and lasted until 1898.
Though few would claim "utopian" status, intentional communities are groups of people who strive for a more ideal life in some way, and are inspired by a similar urge to that found in utopian novels. These communities are cultural and social experiments in better living. Some of the better known modern experiments include the Findhorn Foundation
in Scotland
, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
, Twin Oaks and Los Horcones
(inspired by B. F. Skinner's Walden Two
) and The Farm
in the US, ZEGG in Germany, Camphill Communities (all over, but originating in Europe), and Auroville
in India.
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
world, or dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
. Many novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and other speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
genres, and arguably are by definition a type of speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
.
More than 400 utopian works were published prior to the year 1900 in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
alone, with more than a thousand others during the twentieth century.
Utopian fiction
The word utopia was first used in this context by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 work UtopiaUtopia (book)
Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
. The word utopia resembles both the Greek words "no place", "outopos", and "good place", "eutopos". In his book, which was written in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, More sets out a vision of an ideal society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. As the title suggests, the work presents an ambiguous and ironic projection of the ideal state. The whimsical nature of the text can be confirmed by the narrator of Utopia's second book, Raphael Hythloday. The Greek root of Hythloday suggests an 'expert in nonsense'. An earlier example of a Utopian work from classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
is Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's The Republic, in which he outlines what he sees as the ideal society and its political system
Political system
A political system is a system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems...
. Later examples can be seen in Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about happiness by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was “The Choice of Life". He wrote the piece to help support his seriously ill mother with an intended completion date of January 22, 1759...
and Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...
's Erewhon
Erewhon
Erewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
, which nearly spells 'nowhere' backwards. This, like much of the utopian literature, can be seen as utopian satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
which is most notable in the inversion of illness and crime which Butler portrays, with punishment for the former and treatment for the latter.
Dystopian fiction
Dystopia is defined as a society characterized by poverty, squalor, or oppression. Most authors of dystopian fiction explore at least one reason why things are that way.Dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
s usually extrapolate elements of contemporary society and are read by many as political warnings. Many purported utopias reveal a dystopian character by suppressing justice, freedom and happiness. Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...
's Erewhon
Erewhon
Erewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
can be seen as a dystopia because of the way sick people are punished as criminals while thieves are cured in hospitals, which the inhabitants of Erewhon see as natural and right, i.e. utopian (as mocked in Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
's Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
.) Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's novel Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
is a more subtle and more threatening dystopia because he projected into the year 2540 industrial and social changes he perceived in 1931, leading to a fascist hierarchy of society, industrially successful by exploiting a slave class conditioned and drugged to obey and enjoy their servitude. George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
is a dystopian novel about a coercive and impoverished totalitarian society, conditioning its population through propaganda rather than drugs. Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
's The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985...
describes a future North America governed by strict religious rules which only the privileged dare defy.
Combinations
Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
's Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
is sometimes linked with utopian (and dystopian) literature, because it shares the general preoccupation with ideas of the good (and bad) society. Of the countries Lemuel Gulliver
Lemuel Gulliver
Lemuel Gulliver is the protagonist and narrator of Gulliver's Travels, a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726.-In Gulliver's Travels:...
visits, only the Country of the Houyhnhnms approaches a utopia; most of the others have significant dystopian aspects.
Many works combine elements of both utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer from our world will journey to another place or time and see one society the author considers ideal, and another representing the worst possible outcome. The point is usually that the choices we make now may lead to a better or worse potential future world. Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...
's Always Coming Home
Always Coming Home
Always Coming Home is a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin published in 1985. This novel is about a cultural group of humans—the Kesh—who "might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California." Always Coming Home is a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin published in 1985. This novel is...
fulfils this model, as does Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.-Biography:...
's Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on the Edge of Time is a novel by Marge Piercy. It is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic.-Plot summary:...
. In Starhawk
Starhawk
Starhawk is an American writer and activist. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion...
's The Fifth Sacred Thing
The Fifth Sacred Thing
The Fifth Sacred Thing is a 1993 post-apocalyptic novel written by Starhawk.-Plot:The novel describes a world set in the year 2048 after a catastrophe which has fractured the United States into several nations...
there is no time-travelling observer, but her ideal society is invaded by a neighbouring power embodying evil repression. In Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's Island
Island (novel)
Island is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often...
, in many ways a counterpoint to his better-known Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
, the fusion of the best parts of Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophy deals extensively with problems in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics, and epistemology.Some scholars assert that early Buddhist philosophy did not engage in ontological or metaphysical speculation, but was based instead on empirical evidence gained by the sense organs...
and Western technology is threatened by the "invasion" of oil companies.
In another literary model, the imagined society journeys between elements of utopia and dystopia over the course of the novel or film. At the beginning of The Giver
The Giver
The Giver is a 1993 soft science fiction novel by Lois Lowry. It is set in a society which is at first presented as a utopian society and gradually appears more and more dystopian. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life...
by Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry is an American author of children's literature. She began her career as a photographer and a freelance journalist during the early 1970s...
, the world is described as a utopia, but as the book progresses, the world's dystopian aspects are revealed.
Ecotopian fiction
A subgenre of this is ecotopian fiction, where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction. Ernest CallenbachErnest Callenbach
Ernest Callenbach is an American writer. Life & Work =Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form...
's Ecotopia is an important 20th century example of this genre, as is the California trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer known for his award-winning Mars trilogy. His work delves into ecological and sociological themes regularly, and many of his novels appear to be the direct result of his own scientific fascinations, such as the fifteen years of research...
. Robinson has also edited an anthology of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
Future Primitive - The New Ecotopias, edited by Kim Stanley Robinson, republishes notable short works of utopian fiction and dystopian fiction, incorporating elements of primitivism and of eco-anarchism.-Contents:...
. The novel The Bridge (1973) by D. Keith Mano presents a world dominated by a global environmental fascism, where the government ultimately promotes the extinction of the human race by enforced mass suicide, so as to 'save' the environment.
Other examples include the Uplift Series by David Brin
David Brin
Glen David Brin, Ph.D. is an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards.-Biography:...
wherein ecotopian value systems and their implications are explored in a fictional galactic society.
Feminist Utopias
Another important subgenre is feminist utopias and the overlapping category of feminist science fictionFeminist science fiction
Feminist science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction which tends to deal with women's roles in society. Feminist science fiction poses questions about social issues such as how society constructs gender roles, the role reproduction plays in defining gender and the unequal political and...
. Writer Sally Miller Gearhart
Sally Miller Gearhart
Sally Miller Gearhart is an American teacher, feminist, science fiction writer, and political activist. In 1973 she became the first open lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by San Francisco State University, where she helped establish one of the first women and...
calls this sort of fiction political: it contrasts the present world with an idealized society, criticizes contemporary values and conditions, sees men or masculine systems
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as equal to or superior to men, having ownership over their reproductive functions
Reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...
. A common solution to gender oppression or social ills
Social problems
Social problems are problems and difficulties that people often face in society. These include:*crime*corruption*poverty*homelessness*hunger*disease*drug addiction*alcoholism*schizophrenia*depression*pollution...
in feminist utopian fiction is to remove men, either showing isolated all-female societies as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...
's Herland
Herland (novel)
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis . The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination...
, or societies where men have died out or been replaced, as in Joanna Russ
Joanna Russ
Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny...
's A Few Things I Know About Whileaway, where "the poisonous binary gender" has died off. Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on the Edge of Time is a novel by Marge Piercy. It is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic.-Plot summary:...
keeps human biology, but removes pregnancy and childbirth from the gender equation by resorting to artificial wombs, while allowing both women and men the nurturing experience of breastfeeding
Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is the feeding of an infant or young child with breast milk directly from female human breasts rather than from a baby bottle or other container. Babies have a sucking reflex that enables them to suck and swallow milk. It is recommended that mothers breastfeed for six months or...
.
Utopias have explored the ramification of gender being either a societal construct or a hard-wired imperative. In Mary Gentle
Mary Gentle
-Literary career:Mary Gentle's first published novel was Hawk in Silver , a young-adult fantasy. She came to prominence with the Orthe duology, which consists of Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light ....
's Golden Witchbreed, gender is not chosen until maturity, and gender has no bearing on social roles. In contrast, Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five is a 1980 science fiction novel by Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing. It is the second book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series....
(1980) suggests that men's and women's values are inherent to the sexes and cannot be changed, making a compromise between them essential. In My Own Utopia (1961) by Elizabeth Mann Borghese, gender exists but is dependent upon age rather than sex — genderless children mature into women, some of whom eventually become men.
Utopic single-gender worlds
Single-gender worlds
A relatively common motif in speculative fiction is the existence of single gender worlds or single-sex societies. These fictional societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences in science fiction and fantasy...
or single-sex societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have been imagined to come about by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenic reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by feminist writers. Many influential feminist utopias of this sort were written in the 1970s; the most often studied examples include Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Suzy McKee Charnas
Suzy McKee Charnas
Suzy McKee Charnas is an American novelist and short story writer, writing primarily in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. She has won several awards for her fiction, including the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. A selection of her short fiction was collected...
's Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on the Edge of Time is a novel by Marge Piercy. It is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic.-Plot summary:...
. Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included equality between sexes, rather than separation. Such worlds have been portrayed most often by lesbian or feminist authors; their use of female-only worlds allows the exploration of female independence and freedom from patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
. The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all — Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a famous early example of a sexless society. Charlene Ball writes in Women's Studies Encyclopedia that use of speculative fiction to explore gender roles has been more common in the United States than in Europe and elsewhere.
Cultural impact
Étienne CabetÉtienne Cabet
Étienne Cabet was a French philosopher and utopian socialist. He was the founder of the Icarian movement and led a group of emigrants to found a new society in the United States.-Biography:...
's work Travels in Icaria caused a group of followers to leave France in 1848 and travel to the United States to found a series of utopian settlements in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, California, and elsewhere. These groups lived in communal settings and lasted until 1898.
Though few would claim "utopian" status, intentional communities are groups of people who strive for a more ideal life in some way, and are inspired by a similar urge to that found in utopian novels. These communities are cultural and social experiments in better living. Some of the better known modern experiments include the Findhorn Foundation
Findhorn Foundation
The Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain....
in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Ecovillage
Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...
, Twin Oaks and Los Horcones
Los Horcones
Los Horcones, Mexico, has described itself "as the only true Walden Two community in existence". The members of Los Horcones use techniques based on behavioral science to shape their own and each others behaviors. They use those behavior-shaping techniques in politically coordinated ways and they...
(inspired by B. F. Skinner's Walden Two
Walden Two
Walden Two is a utopian novel written by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, first published in 1948. In its time, it could have been considered to be science fiction, as the methods employed to alter people's behaviour did not yet exist....
) and The Farm
The Farm (Tennessee)
The Farm is an intentional community in Lewis County, Tennessee, near the town of Summertown, Tennessee, based on principles of nonviolence and respect for the Earth. It was founded in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin and 320 San Francisco hippies; The Farm is well known amongst hippies and other members of...
in the US, ZEGG in Germany, Camphill Communities (all over, but originating in Europe), and Auroville
Auroville
Auroville is an "experimental" township in Viluppuram district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, near Pondicherry in South India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa and designed by architect Roger Anger...
in India.
See also
- UtopiaUtopiaUtopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
- DystopiaDystopiaA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
(Cacotopia, Anti-utopia) - Arena Publishing Company
- Social science fictionSocial science fictionSocial science fiction is a term used to describe a subgenre of science fiction concerned less with technology and space opera and more with sociological speculation about human society...
- List of dystopian literature
- List of dystopian films
- List of dystopian music, TV programs, and games
- List of dystopian comics
- List of sequels to Looking Backward
- Paul GoschPaul GoschPaul Gösch , also Goesch or Göschen, was a German artist, architect, lithographer, and designer of the early twentieth century; he was associated with the main elements of German Expressionism....
- Wenzel HablikWenzel HablikWenzel August Hablik , also known as Wenceslav Hablik and Wilhelm August Hablik, was a painter and graphic artist, architect, designer, and craftsman of the early twentieth century, associated with German Expressionism.Hablik was born in Brüx, Bohemia...
- The Human DriftThe Human DriftThe Human Drift is a work of Utopian social planning, written by King Camp Gillette and first published in 1894. The book details Gillette's plans for social and technological advancements that would replace the chaos of contemporary existence, which he termed the "human drift," with steady and...