A PESSIMISTS' GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

[Introduction]

This pamphlet accompanied my talk given at the 2010 Socialist Party of Great Britain Summer School. The weekend school's theme was 'Future Visions' - different perspectives on what the future might be like. I chose to discuss dystopias, having a fondness for works like Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Chrysalids. While researching the topic, I realised that there would be a long list of gloomy, oppressive nightmare societies to read about. How many could I stomach without getting too depressed to plough through any more? To avoid overloading myself, what I wanted was a short-cut, a handy directory. Ideally, it would provide plot summaries, background details and opinions on each dystopia, nothing too deep. The sort of thing you read in the bath, rather than a jargon-heavy media studies textbook. When I couldn't find such a book, I somehow felt obliged to have a go at something like it myself. Of course, this meant that I would have to try and survive umpteen dystopias after all.

The main criterion for inclusion here is fictional works which explore a future society worse than the present, at least in some respects. Kim Newman defines a dystopia (in his introduction to The Year Of The Sex Olympics DVD): "you pick something that is sort of annoying or potentially dangerous or frightening or ridiculous that's actually popular in the present day and you extrapolate it as a trend into an imaginary future in which whatever it is you're worried about has come to dominate the world". The protagonist of many dystopias is someone who begins to question the society they are living in, and usually tries to rebel against it, like Winston Smith, Guy Montag, or Offred. Works have been chosen not only for their renown within literary or political circles, but also for the popularity as mainstream films (2012) or television programmes (The War Game). Other selections are personal favourites which I'd like more people to know about, such as The Year Of The Sex Olympics. Overall, my aim is mostly to emphasise some of the political points that can be made through speculative or science fiction. Another aim was to satisfy a geeky interest in near-useless trivia, so expect to find references to Enid Blyton, Daleks and even Deep Throat.

It would be fraudulent of me to claim that this pamphlet is anything approaching definitive. There are hundreds of other dystopias out there, especially if you widen your definition away from just potential futures with some sort of political subtext. And, due to time constraints, many significant and influential dystopias aren't included. A future edition would also include entries on Revelation, The Iron Heel, Swastika Night, Player Piano, Riders Of The Purple Wage, Brazil, Left Behind and, especially, Wells' dystopias, such as The Sleeper Awakes.