Illustration: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters of Goya. There are two ways by which science fiction can make us feel apprehension and even fear of the future that awaits us. One of them already discussed in this blog, this is apocalyptic stories. Today I try the second route for fear the future, stories dystopian.
A dystopia is usually defined as the opposite of a utopia, an imaginary society as unjust and oppressive in its terms, the perfect dictatorship. For his opposition to the idea of \u200b\u200butopia is also common to refer to this type of shell companies and anti-utopias. Is a genus closely related to the apocalyptic, so much so that many works have elements of both, being difficult to determine which predominates, the apocalyptic or dystopian. This relationship arises that should be standard practice in the dystopian genre, it must be an apocalyptic event such as a starting point. The event will justify the existence of the despotic regime, first as a survival tool for disaster, and later, as the only safeguard against its repetition hypothetical. We can therefore say without prior apocalypse, there can be a dystopia, as only an extreme fear can lead to a logical extreme waiver freely.
Once arguably is justified as it can be a society so evil, it's time to explore. The protagonist of these stories will always be a rebel. This is something we take for granted, as the tyrannical regime that presents the story is a clear embodiment of evil, and the most common fiction is that evil must be combated. But the standard of these stories is that the protagonist start being the rebel that will become as the story unfolds. On the contrary, the principle is a perfectly integrated into the system. You may feel suspicion towards him, can even feel it's unfair, until you feel oppressed, but never think of rebelling against him. But as we would have no story if it did, the events will ultimately force it. It is important to note that although many of these stories appear as protagonists apparent characters, or are completely unrelated to the company submitted, foreigners unable to understand or appreciate, or at an early stage are in open rebellion against it, the main function these characters is to open the eyes of the character that spoke first. In fact, the most important thing they do in their respective histories John the Savage or V is to show Evey Hammond Bernard Marx or to what extent have agreed to become slaves, and convince them that is worth fighting. At this point we can provide that for a dystopian story need: a tyrannical society emerging from a great catastrophe, an inhabitant of the same critical awareness which is likely to be awakened, an unforeseen event that will shake this awareness, and usually another character holding of the previous guide.
It is also important to note that it is very common for these stories end badly. The power face is too big players to aspire to beat him, and indeed it is the characters fighting for their own dignity. For die standing than live on your knees, I would say Che. In any case, it can save the hero, but at the price of exile from the society they faced. What's more, even if tyranny becomes defeated, the final slope customary to leave a doubt about the future. In the end, these stories are moral tales, and its function is to make us ponder whether we are not building a dystopia ourselves right now. In fact, gender has always grown from the hand of evil considered as "collateral effects" of progress technology, and although as late nineteenth century as stories of HG Wells classic, most notably The Time Machine, in which the protagonist speculates that the world is seeing is the consequence taken to end class-divided society, begin to explore the ground and warn about the misuse of technology is really at the end of World War I when the genre really took off. The first great war of the twentieth century opened the possibility of global destruction scenarios hitherto never imagined, and served his time as a leaven for the growth of ideologies advocating totalitarianism as the price of utopia. World War I, along with the rise of fascism and Marxism-Leninism cast an ominous shadow on the future of mankind that the narrative arts could not ignore. Once placed on record, it's time to meet some of the most representative works of a century of existence of the genre, noting, as always, these summaries contain plot elements, and in many cases, enormous spoilers.
As the list is long, I have chosen to divide it into two articles. in this first attempt of the period from the end of World War I at the end of the decade of the 50
And since we have spoken of Bolshevism as one of the basic factors of gender, it is logical that we start our review of the classics in Russia. In 1922 Yevgeny Zamyatin We public. The work appeared first translated into French, as the Russian original was banned by Soviet censorship, not seeing the light until the decade of the 50. Shows us a future society, the result of a war called the War of 200 years "in which life is regulated even in the most minimal aspects of schedules and regulations in pursuit of maximum productivity. Citizens (known issues) do not have names, but only identification numbers. His daily life is regulated by strict schedules, it being understood as an extension of their working day. They have no right to privacy, live in houses of transparent walls, having the right to draw the curtains only during the hours designated for sexual activity. Sexual relations are managed by the State and are subject to a cumbersome bureaucracy, with the idea of \u200b\u200bavoiding the creation of any emotional bond considered irrational. The cities are surrounded by walls that isolate the natural world, considered wild and dangerous. The protagonist, a renowned rocket engineer, fully convinced of the fairness of the system in which they live, begin to put in question by falling victim to the passion for a woman, which makes everything blow up his scheme of values. Finally will join the rebellion for her, but end up being defeated and reprogrammed. Yet the novel ends up realizing that the wall that isolates the city forest, a haven for dissidents and rebels fled, is being strengthened, which indicates that the rebellion is far from having been defeated for good.
Illustration: Metropolis movie poster with the famous female robot that is its most recognizable icon. In post-revolutionary Russia, skip to another laboratory of totalitarianism in interwar Germany, to discuss a cinematic masterpiece, a film usually considered a metaphor for ideological struggles of those tumultuous years, which eventually give way to Nazism. In 1927 opens Metropolis, film directed by Fritz Lang on a script for his wife Thea von Harbou . The action takes place in a futuristic city in the XXI century, in which a ruling elite lives given over to all sorts of decadent luxury at the highest levels of the large towers, while working people are crowded into slums located on the lower levels of the city, living practically in slavery. These oppressed people have a spiritual leader, a woman named Maria. The mayor of the city, fearing his influence among the underprivileged, would speak against this character so annoying, but the fact that advocates nonviolence deprived of the necessary excuse to stop. It then yields to the suggestions of counsel, the classic mad scientist, to kidnap the real Mary, and replace it with a dual robotic (the robot so seductive female form that all we have ever seen in any cut of the movie) to incite the masses to the revolution, providing the perfect excuse. However, when the revolt broke out, it is uncontrollable and threatens to destroy the city. But meanwhile, the mayor's son who, secretly in love with Maria had fallen to lower levels seen with his own eyes the reality of oppression that hid his charmed life, manages to rescue the real Maria, and achieve a peaceful settlement between the revolutionaries and leaders of the city. A happy ending that tells us much about the delicate political situation in Germany at the time, and they had to balance the authors, whose failing marriage itself would end their political differences.
Illustration: Aldous Huxley. 1932 appears in one of the best-known novels and referred to the genre. Aldous Huxley member of a family with a long tradition in the field of biology and medicine, choose bacteriological warfare as a way to bring humanity to the apocalypse in his classic Brave New World. Of this destruction will be born a society where science and technology are entering the race as the only safeguard against disaster. In this society, men are no longer born, they are cultivated by cloning, and education is a sophisticated brainwashing system whose ultimate goal is to put the future adult employment prospects that has been previously assigned, either as leader or as a laborer in a mine. A rigidly structured society into castes, in which rampant consumerism is enforceable standard, with lots of trivial pursuits to avoid the temptation of critical thinking, among which are a sense of pure erotic fun and anxiolytic drug, soma, where consumption is recommended before any hint of unhappiness. Bernard Marx, a member of the intellectual caste discontent with their own status and reputation within it, you'll learn during a routine visit to a primitive indigenous reserve a charismatic character, John the Savage. Convinced he has found the key to access the high society circles, John Bernard will lead to the "civilized" world, where, as he had calculated, will produce a deep impact. However, problems soon began, as John the Savage, lacking the constraints of the "civilized" soon began to complain as a perfect world a disguised tyranny, and its civilized inhabitants as slaves too stupid to be aware of their own enslavement. This would cause the downfall of his patron, which had just awakened critical consciousness in this process, ending with the exile Bernard to a provincial position, and the destruction of John at the hands of the ruthless "civilization."
In 1936 opens The future life, produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies , based on the novel by HG Wells The shape of things to come. The theme of the film are the generations of one family, the Cabal. The film begins with the outbreak of a second (we're talking about 1936, remember) world wars in the year 1940 (the prediction failed for only one year) that lasts for decades, and ends with the destruction of civilization, such as we know. The world returns to feudalism, with warlords and tribal leaders fight among themselves for dominance of the small kingdoms in Europe has been divided, and the remnants of the decadent and military technology, until they appear the emissaries of a foreign organization, from its base in the Middle East, trying to rebuild civilization with, how could it be otherwise, submission to science as the norm. Military force newcomers soon defeat the feudal lords, and employ a strict containment, means preferring the use of riot rather than lethal force. The film takes a new leap forward a couple of generations, to show this perfect society already established, but within it begins to show signs of dissent. The total submission to technology is not like a group of citizens, more inclined toward the arts, making opposition to a new space exploration project flag. Soon, violence erupts between the two sides, which leads to ruin this perfect society.
Illustration: George Orwell We will now time warp in which we will leave the World War II, whose horrors seemed no more than confirm the worst nightmares of science fiction. In 1949 published the seminal work, the real ship insigina of gender, but nightmarish vision of the future ever imagined. A novel whose influence is so great that today, even people who never have read it certainly know what we mean by an Orwellian society . Why not, we're talking about 1984. George Orwell , leftist journalist, who fought as a volunteer in the English Civil War, deeply disillusioned by the totalitarianism that the Russian revolution had degenerated, imagine a future of absolute oppression, where privacy does not exist, since the surveillance cameras of the political police are everywhere, including the houses of citizens, where everyone are encouraged to become an informer, where censorship is absolute and newspaper archives are constantly reviewed to remove any information that could contradict the government's current policy, which maintains a state of perpetual war between continental powers, which justifies the oppressive regime led by tyrant whose title has passed into popular imagination as synonymous with the perfect dictator, the Big Brother . Winston Smith, gray bureaucrat of this machine, enter, again because of a woman (and begins to recur) in contact with the resistance against this tyranny. However, to his misfortune, to discover that this resistance does not exist, it is a trick most of the repressive machine that also needs internal enemies to be able to victimize the public.
Illustration: Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose "game brjuas" inspired by the novel anti-Fahrenheit 451 In 1953, at the height of McCarthyism and his passion censorship, Fahrenheit 451 is published . Ray Bradbury's work , shows a future world where censorship is absolute. In that society is absolutely forbidden to own books, commissioned the burning fire of the same issues. Bradbury described a world mesmerized by the entertainment insubstantial as banal sitcoms, cars that run at high speeds on the highways, and an ongoing propaganda about the impending war, which simply going for a walk instead can drive a car flamboyant, openly is considered antisocial. The protagonist, Guy Montag, one of the firemen responsible for the burning of books, at first feeling curious about the world that battle, began to take books home and read them secretly. This will make you question the system it serves. Needless to say, will eventually be discovered, having to flee the city to save his life. Once in the woods (this also is becoming a trend) will know the men-books. People who have fled also of that society, and culture have decided to save persecuted memorizing books. These rebels will host Montag techniques to ensure that they know him remember every word I have ever read, and therefore he will be a valuable contribution to human library. The story ends with the outbreak of war announced, with the men watching from the shelter book as missiles fall on the city.
In 1954 appears Space Merchants, work Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Space Merchants may be regarded as a work ahead of her time, because in an era in which the red terror of nuclear war were the recurring themes of the genre, presents us with a future society dominated by large corporations, where politics and has no power and large firms come to have their own seats in the United States Congress. A story that seem to connect directly with cyberpunk fantasies that appear thirty years later. The protagonist, Mitchell Courtenay, a senior executive of a major advertising firm, is at the height of his career as a maneuver by a jealous rival for his last promotion he knocks its position at the top of the pyramid. Kidnapped, is delivered as a pawn to a plantation in Costa Rica, where they have falsified their identity, leaving him subject to a labor contract that is the closest thing to a sentence to hard labor in this allegedly perfect society exists. But there Courtenay contact with the resistance, a group called the consist, pseudoecologista ideology, considered the greatest enemies of society. Initially, Courtenay plans to use to escape and regain his status, but when it does, and rebel ideology has penetrated too deeply into him, becoming, in his own words, "a master who now despised the ideals of society" . This Naturally, it will take to participate in a large plot, and finally exiled to the space colony of Venus, once exposed as a conspirator. A colony that secretly, is under rebel control.
I put here for now so this first review some of the classics of the genre. In the second installment, we discuss what has been whether from the sixties up to this day, has been very, very good.
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