Utopian Literature vs. Dystopian Literature

UTOPIAN LITERATURE

Utopian literature portrays a setting agreeing with an author’s ethos and is portrayed as having various attributes readers often discover as characteristics they would prefer to implement in reality. 

DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE

Dystopian literature (sometimes combined with, but distinct from, apocalyptic literature) is the opposite of utopian literature: the portrayal of a setting disagreeing with an author’s ethos and is portrayed as having various attributes readers often discover as characteristics they would not prefer to implement, or avoid entirely, in reality.

Many novels combine both concepts, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity’s choices lead, representing two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other speculative fiction genres and, arguably by definition, are a type of speculative fiction.

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More than four hundred 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” was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 novel Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities attempting to create ideal societies and the imagined societies portrayed in fiction. Alternative views on structural and qualitative attributes of society have spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopian literature.

"Utopia" actually means a world which could never exist, as opposed to the popular belief of a "perfect world," forcing a dystopia to maintain a similar quality. The word “utopia” derives from Greek, literally translating to “not place” or “no place.” Dystopia was coined as the antonym to refer to an “imagined bad place”; “dystopia” was first utilized by J. S. Mill (an English philosopher, political economist, feminist, and civil servant) in one of his Parliamentary Speeches (1868).

EXAMPLES

Utopia:

Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe

Utopia (1516) by Thomas More

Dystopia:

The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells

Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley