Talk:List of dystopian literature

The Last Man

Shelley's TLM was one of the first and most influential texts, wasn't it? 134.106.199.13 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

'Citation needed'

The ubiquitous 'citation needed' tags on this page are garish and unnecessary. If you disagree with a book, just delete it and perhaps leave a comment here if it's controversial. We don't need some literary journal cite to list what well-known dystopian novels are —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.244.70.214 (talk) 23:39, August 27, 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. All the tags look utterly ridiculous. Anyone in favor of leaving them and why? Otherwise, I think they should be removed. 71.175.28.121 (talk) 18:22, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

No, the tags stay until references are provided. This is an encyclopedia, after all. Every item on the list has to be explained and justified by a reputable source. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 21:41, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

"No, the tags stay until references are provided." Apparently you missed the part about consensus being an important part of Wikipedia. While you might not think tagging every line is absurd, others certainly do. But, apparently, you seem to think your opinion is more important than anyone else's, so therefore it's your way or the highway. Even though you apparently have read few of the books on this list, you think you know better than someone who has. As well, the whole process of "verifying" seems upside-down; someone is wasting a lot of time slapping tags on virtually everything and removing books rather than considering the opinion of people who have actually read the books in question. (This sort of silly thinking was what kept Stalinist Russia so inefficient; "this has not been licensed as a book; therefore, it is not a book.") A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle, for example, is clearly a dystopian novel to anyone who has read it. One need only read its entry here at Wikipedia to ascertain that. Additionally, a thirty-second search of The New York Times reveals, in a review, "The setting is Southern California in 2025. The environment has been ravaged by pollution, plunder and global warming. Meat and fish are rarities, the forests have been leveled, and the climate careers between drought and unending, vicious rainstorms." Well that's clearly dystopian. So why was it removed? Why was time spent removing rather than improving? When did Wikipedia become a petty cult of obsessive-compulsive removists? That's largely why I stopped contributing here years ago; too many people were more interested in creating an obstructionist bureaucracy and trying to force other people to their way of thinking than creating an inclusive compendium of knowledge. I see someone hasn't footnoted in the dog article that it's a mammal; I suppose that should be deleted, too, or at a minimum tagged.

"Every item on the list has to be explained and justified by a reputable source." Oh really? And where is that written? If one were to follow your "standard," virtually every sentence in Wikipedia should be tagged unless it is footnoted. Which is, of course, patently absurd and not Wikipedia policy nor style. And, further, your standard is not the Wikipedia standard for lists, which states, "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed, list definitions should to be based on reliable sources." Nowhere does this standard require that every item on a list be sourced nor must every unsourced item be tagged or removed. In looking at dozens of other lists here on Wikipedia, I see none of them cluttered with silly tags like this one.

For someone who posits him/herself as rather rigid about documentation, you seem to ignore documented standards that don't conveniently fit your personal choices. 71.175.28.121 (talk) 02:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Stem

I've created a stem for this article and the list of dystopian films one, pointing out that there can be controversy about particular works that are not obviously and classically dystopias. I'm not wedded to the words, but I do see the need for something like what I've written ... and the talk page of the other article tends to confirm my thinking. The various articles related to dystopia are tending to push the definition beyond what many critics would be comfortable with (I think). The words I've written are offered in good faith to address the problem, but may not be perfect. Metamagician3000 13:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Rand?

What about Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Surely that depicts a dystopia society..the type where gov't controls too much and therefore causes businesses to go on strike, which obviously make society go downhill.68.162.69.174 15:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm no Randroid, but I don't think you can have a dystopia where each individual calls the shots for their own destiny. --Happylobster 19:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

-The People's States in Atlas Shrugged emerge as attempt by the power-lusting to accumulate power and regulate human lives, in a fashion that proves ineffective, corrupt, enormously oppressive and destructive. If Anthem counts as a dystopia so should Atlas Shrugged, it's the same theme, it simply lasts a shorter time and to an extent is shown emerging.

• Raskolnikov

Which one...

..is the one where corporations grow so powerful that businesses like Wal-Mart and McDonalds own countries and can lob nukes at each other and eventual control space routes, etc?-G

Starship Troopers

I agree that most of the works are dystopian without question. However, I would question the inclusion of Starship Troopers on this list. While the society depicted in the novel does have some striking differences from current norms, I would hardly classify it as dystopian. There is no "Big Brother" or other classic dystopian construct. If anything, the rights of the individual are paramount, with the chief exception being service before citizenship. This places it more in a utopian than dystopian setting. I would like to remove it from the list, but want to hear arguments to the contrary first. I might be missing something... Malakhi 19:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the first possibility for a Dystopia in the article is "A Utopian society that has at least one fatal flaw." Not that I've read Starship Troopers... but the World State in Brave New World could be considered Utopian by some, albeit at the cost of individual expression. I guess what you might be missing (to use your own words) is the flaw. --208.192.70.129 03:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be specific, it states a fatal flaw. The only real flaw in the system that presents itself in the book (as I recall it) is the possible disenfranchisement of those who choose not to pursue civil service. But, when the story touches on such people, they seem content with their decision not to participate. Their human rights are still secure; they are simply unable to vote or participate in politics. Malakhi 16:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

-More precisely, in the book the system is presented by Heinlein as laudatory. Various readers may have concerns, but in the eyes of the author it is not intended as a dystopian work, and can't be meaningfully classified as much. The same theme applies to some others.

• Raskolnikov

Watership Down

Watership Down contains a society which initially appears Utopian. The rabbits are well-fed, study poetry and the arts and want for nothing. However it is a repressed society whose rabbits live under the unspoken understanding that they are being harvested by the local farmer. This meets a number of criteria for a Dystopia. --81.139.66.222 15:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetisation

The order seems a bit strange, have I missed something? Does anyone object if change it? 81.136.66.82 17:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

What do you find strange? --(Mingus ah um 05:06, 19 June 2006 (UTC))

I've moved it around now - it wasn't in Alphabetic order 81.136.66.82 16:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I have deleted the entry "Soylent Green" by Harry Harrison, as this is the title of the film made from Harrison's book "Make Room! Make Room!", which is featured under 'M' on this page.

stories which contrast dystopian and other societies

Many works contrast a dystopian society with another non-dystopian society -- such as, Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing, or Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. I haven't added these just yet; pondering it and considering the list. Other thoughts. --LQ 17:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

A Clockwork Orange is Dystopian

The book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is undoubtadly an example of dystopian literature. By definition a dystopian world is were society is characterized by human misery, squalor, oppression, disease and overcrowding. These are all present in the book as well as the existence of an oppresive state. Therefore the book should be included.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.229.119 (talk • contribs)

By what definition? That isn't the definition in Wikipedia. Do you have a source for this classification? Notinasnaid 14:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary furher to this i believe the Wikipedia defintion of dystopia also conforms to what is in the book.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.229.119 (talk • contribs)

Thanks for that. Now, what I meant by "Do you have a source for this classification" was: do you have a reliable source (e.g. a scholarly writing in a journal, even at a push a book review in a major newspaper or magazine) which made this connection? Notinasnaid 16:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Citations

I've now managed to source 20 claims of dystopia using the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (which I think would be generally recognised as a scholarly resource). This leaves over 90, which I have each tagged with citation needed.

How to move forward? The aim must be 100% citations, but how to get there? I propose now to go through the same work looking for each entry in which a novel is discussed that is listed here. If the novel appears in a context where it might reasonably say it's dystopian, but it doesn't, I propose removing it. Of course, nothing precludes it coming back with a citaton to something else.

Comments? Notinasnaid 14:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

My next proposal is to remove all works which do not have a citation where the same author does have a cited alternative. A single work per author is probably enough, and that will streamline the job some more. Notinasnaid 12:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Please stop doing this, Notinasnaid. An end user should be able to use a standard definition of a literary term, apply it to a work, and include it in a list. If War and Peace does not have somebody out there who said, "This is a work of fiction," does it mean that it can't be listed as such? And does the very word need to be cited? You need to allow the definition itself to be the scholarly research and allow the editor to see what fits. The service you can do is say, "No, this does not fit the scholarly-researched definition and thus it gets removed." That requires more work on your part, but provides a more informed list.

Consider Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut has always maintained that it is not a science fiction novel, but rather speculative fiction. Meriam Webster offers a definition of science fiction that an editor considers compatible. Meanwhile Dr. Joe Smarmy, PhD. thinks it is a part of a newly invented genre called "Dresdenography" and writes it so in his scholoraly journal read only by him, his mother, and a Wikipidea editor (this may, btw, only be two people). Given only these three pieces of information, your criteria would only include it in the list of Dresdenographical works, leaving science fiction and (certainly if Vonnegut was the editor) speculative fiction lists empty. There's something fundementally wrong with that, and I maintain you are misusing the definition of original research.--Happylobster 15:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we are both aiming for much the same thing. I will make no more changes from the above pattern (though I may still remove new unsourced driveby additions) until further discussion, and hopefully some consensus. It will just take me a little while to organise my thoughts. Notinasnaid 20:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Removal

In the absence of any further input, I will start removing unsourced entries. My proposal is to remove those without any source, and at this stage which do not have a Wikipedia article identifying dystopian themes. If the article does not have a source, I will add a citation needed to the article. Items removed will be accumulated below for possible rescue by people with more sources than me. Notinasnaid 11:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Letters checked so far: A-B, E-F.

• Among the Hidden by Margaret Haddix
• Brown by Franck Pavloff
• The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
• Farthing by Jo Walton
• A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle
• The Futurological Congress or Kongres futurologiczny by Stanislaw Lem (the sources were nearly there but turned out to be opinion pieces; some journals not online might have helped)

Harry Potter a dystopia?

Ok, who put a popular "Harry Potter" as a dystopia. I read (and seem if referring to movies) the Harry Potter book series and I don't find any reference of a dystopia. Sure the plot of the book mostly involves with a crazy cult serial killer but if you look at the soceity in Harry Potter, do you see anything problems with it?

So I removed "harry potter" out of the list until some person confirm this. Besides, most dystopias are usually alternate history/futuristic theme. --Dark paladin x 22:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Cutting

• V for Vendetta is a comic book, not literature per say, and I'm removing it from this list.

-Raskolnikov

• On a similar note, I've read The Demolished Man, and would not consider it dystopian. The society is portrays follows rule-of-law, respects individual rights and allows an average level of freedom/prosperity that's not compatible with any meaningful definition of a dystopia. In the absence of a citation, I'm removing from the list.

-Raskolnikov

• I'm adding the Time Machine, the depiction of degenerate future humanity through Eloi/Morlocks is at least as much a dystopia as Make Room! Make Room! and many of the others. I'll try to find citations for this and some of the others later.

-Raskolnikov —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.104.60.69 (talk) 16:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC).

• I think all the side comments should be cut. "Arguably and ambigiously...the first alien dystopia...etc." They can be interesting but they're discracting and unequal, and should be addressed in the article on the book. This page should just have a list of dystopias in literature, with links, not other random information.

-Raskolnikov

• • Note, for discussion purposes: the side comments noted were removed here. Notinasnaid 21:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Addition

• I have added "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" to the list. The reference I site is from a science fiction survey, it reads in part: "Once picked up at any one of the many police checkpoints, a non-person stands an even chance of death or death-in-life, more prosaically known as impressment in a forced-labor camp for the rest of his life. A recent "Second Civil War" has resulted in the establishment of a society patrolled and controlled by an efficient, authoritarian police organization operating under rigid procedural rules." (798)

Clearly this is a dystopian system if anything is. -Raskolnikov —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.104.60.108 (talk) 22:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC).

RUR

• Citation provided to R.U.R, but I can't seem to get it to match the #20 in bottom notes, assistance requested. The citation concerns page 1842, which makes a direct parallel to Evgeny Zamyatin's We, and mentioned: "...the manifesto of the working drones parodies the Russian revolution, the assembly line production of men mocks the technology of the West."

-Raskolnikov

I have moved it around, and I think it should now appear as you intended. Take a look to see what I did. The trick is to do
<ref name=somethingunique>details of citation</ref>.
This doesn't go in the table of citations, but where you want the citation number to appear in the text.Notinasnaid 17:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Addition

The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick added. Very dystopian. It even says in the Rodman Philbrick page that it is dystopian, not to mention the main article for the book. Omniferous 05:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

February 2007

A great many of the fact tags in the article were added in February 2007. So, what happens when we reach the one year mark next month? Do we begin deleting items from the list that have not been cited? Or, do we begin a serious effort to cite those items for which citations can be found? I guess, thinking aloud, that we do a bit of both. I propose that any item on the list which is devoid of an article about the author and/or the title, and is devoid of citation, be deleted. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? The list is getting longer, but less than half have citations. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 17:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, the bane of lists. I agree it's appropriate to take action now, but one year is a bit short of the prescribed deadline. A lot of this gets into editing philosophies. Personally, I think it is most appropriate to find sources when possible, remove entries for which there is serious doubt that such a reliable source does or ever will exist, and the remainder just leave up for the next person to have decent evidence or doubt to take care of it. -Verdatum (talk) 22:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I have begun removing some items that look incontrovertibly non-dystopian. I have also added a great many more fact tags. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 23:38, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Order

Maybe I shouldn't raise this issue, but perhaps this list should be ordered by date of publication? It would then be more valuable to see the progression of the genre (is it a genre? I forget, whatever). Alphabetical order is better than no order, but it doesn't add terribly much as one would never go "Wow, that's a good distopian work that starts with 'C', I wonder what other distopian works start with that letter?" and given the digital format, if we need to find a work in the list, we can always use the search function. I don't know of precedents elsewhere on WP, I think the guideline says it's a case by case concensous...I wouldn't worry about a change any time soon though. I don't particularly feel like taking the time to sort this thing. -Verdatum (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your idea, Verdatum. Chronological order would be much more valuable. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 23:39, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this notion, and can work to begin so re-ordering it soon. I'll try to look at some citations for unsupported ones as well.

In a related issue, I do not believe Island or World War Z belong on the list. The former is a positive model, and regarded by the author as utopian, the later is a more conventional doomsday/extreme threat scenario. I propose removing them, unless someone can promptly advance proof/arguments for their continuation. -Raskolnikov —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.166.80.132 (talk) 20:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you should have held off on the reorganization, Raskolnikov, until there had been more discussion. But, that said, I still believe it is for the best, and I am not going to revert your changes. Please, though, do use an edit summary, because the edits struck me as vandalism at first glance.

As to your 2nd point, I agree with you. In general, we need more distinction between dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction. World War Z, it seems to me, would fall into the latter category, but not the former. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 23:20, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This reordering is now almost completed, and I am moe convinced that it was a good idea. My question now is, when it comes to ordering titles in the same year, are we putting them in order alphabetically by title or by author's last name. This has not been consistent, for which I blame myself. I suppose it should be done by book title. Any thoughts? ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 17:07, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Heart of Darkness

Could Joseph Conrad's HoD be considered dystopian enough? It is arguably dystopian, though it does not have a futuristic/alternate-history setting. Thoughts? --Mrrodgers0 (talk) 02:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(Please put new topics on the bottom, per convention at WP:TALK) I don't believe it is dystopian, it's just a nasty place to be; no attempt was made to make some sort of idealistic society. Ultimately, the way you find out is, if you can find a Reliable Source that calls HoD distopian literature, then it belongs (with the source properly referenced), else it doesn't. -Verdatum (talk) 15:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)