SUMMARY

Utopia noun 1. An imagined place or state of perfection esp with regard to laws, government and social conditions. 2. an impractical scheme for social or political improvement.
Dystopia noun 1. An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror. 2. A work describing such a place or state.
A utopia, by definition, would not make very interesting Science Fiction, since conflict drives good fiction. A dystopia, by contrast, is the stuff good fiction is made of. According to Esther McCallum-Stewart - "Dysfunctional, destructive and doomed worlds seem to be the order of the day, often set in either future or parallel times. In these dark places, the planet is long destroyed physically (the darkness and bad weather of Blade Runner, the Apocalypses of the Terminator films and THX 1138) or through social controls gone wrong (1984, Brave New World, Twelve Monkeys). More recently, these catastrophic predictions have been replaced by milder, but no less pessimistic visions. Futurama, Earth, Final Conflict and Starship Troopers all offer visions which have underlying tensions and problems in each society - lack of morality, threats of fascism and the environmental crisis all providing points of concern."

QUOTES

"The book is a warning of the possibilities of the police state brought to perfection, where power is the only thing that counts, where the past is constantly being modified to fit the present, where the official language, 'Newspeak', progressively narrows the range of ideas and independent thought, and where 'Doublethink' becomes a necessary habit of mind. It is a society dominated by slogans - 'War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength' - and controlled by compulsory worship of the head of the party, Big Brother. The novel had an extraordinary impact, and many of its phrases and coinages (including its title) passed into the common language, although the precise implication of Orwell's warning (and it was a warning rather than a prophecy) have been subjected to many political interpretations"
                                                -From The Oxford Companion to English          re       on                                               Literature on 1984
"For some time, however, Utopia writers have been faced by the increasingly awkward problem, where on earth to put their undiscovered countries? Lord Lytton solved it in The Coming Race (1871) by not putting his Utopia on earth at all, but under it. While investigating a charred and jagged chasm in a new shaft of a mine, an engineer is surprised to see a row of street-lamps leading away into the distance…
"Another solution is to distance your Utopia, not in space, but in time. Since Plato, nobody has been so retrogressive as to place it in the past, but it is often placed in the future. One gets there either by dreaming (News From Nowhere), or by over-sleeping (Looking Backward, and H. G. Well's When the Sleeper Wakes, 1899), or by operating a special apparatus (H. G. Well's The Time Machine, 1895), or by an involuntary exchange of bodies with some unscrupulous member of posterity (John Whydham's Pillar To Post, 1956): or else one is not a visitor at all but a permanent resident, like the bearded heroine of Evelyn Waugh's Love Among the Ruins (1953)
"In the last resort, Utopias and Dystopias can always be located on another planet."
                                                              -Paul Turner, "Introduction to Thomas 
                                                                  Moore's Utopia", Penguin: 1965)

MAIN TEXTS
"1984" Orwell
"Brave New World" Huxley
"Logan's Run" script pdf (local video/DVD store)

RELATED MATERIAL
"The Machine Stops" Binder
"When The Sleeper Wakes" Wells
"Farenheit 451" Bradbury

DISCUSSION/ESSAY TOPICS (Please post comments on the related thread on the discussion board)

1. Do you think the world of 1984 is possible?
2. What themes link the worlds of 1984 and Blade Runner?
3. Why is the individual so important in dystopian visions? 
4. Is the future depicted in Star Trek utopian? If that is the case, why spend so much time visiting other places? What about villains such as the Klingons and the Borg?