/lit/ - Literature

back to reddit filthy pleb

Get waht off my chest? A title list? Why?

Also, most of those aren't even dystopias as much as exagerated versions of the present, it's not the same. BNW is a play on utopia, so it doesn't belong there even if you force the concept.

Don't be a douche, you pretentious ass.

>>5692111
You think mind contol is utopian?
>>5692106
Ass.

>>5692111
>dystopias as much as exagerated versions of the present

All depictions of the future are interrogations of the present in one form or another. Even the mere process of extrapolation implies that. That's why depictions of the future age so rapidly and why short-term predictions are usually too radical and long-term predictions too conservative.

>>5692103
>tfw you dont have the balls to write a ZOG-fantasy "dystopia" cult hilt that incites massive anti-semitism

>>5692134
>balls

That's not how you spell 'talent'.

>>5692134
Should I be under the influence that it takes balls to post that anonymously, regardless of how I feel?

>>5692134

Someone should write a story where the main character does this but it's hailed as a masterfully ironic appeal for pluralism and tolerance.

>>5692126
>You think mind contol is utopian?
If you think the systems at place in BNW are as simple as mind control you fail to read half the book. The point is that governments tend to work like that, with things like alcohol and anti depression drugs (which were a thing even back then) and that an utilitarian society created by design would have a different morality than the one that grew up to this point.

The Iron Heel by Jack London

>>5692157
Social conditioning through hypnotic and biological methods through human engineering... their dependence on those drugs is entirely the government's doing. I don't remember ever being coerced into alcohol/drug consumption by my government.

Bioshock Rapture

>>5692161
I'll give that a read.

>>5692164
I'm sure you were born thinking that there's nothing wrong with drinking a cup of sugar with every litter of water cocacola has and that it's fully natural to do whatever you're doing, I don't know, cleaning your ass with paper. Everything is indoctrination and engineering. The point was the explore how a fully functional society would be created and what would be the flaws of that, all in all the people in BNW are pretty happy and if you are too good you get sent to an island with all the best people anyway.

>>5692180
Whatever I choose to do is up to me. I'll wipe my ass with binder paper and drink formaldehyde if I have the inclination. It is my freedom to choose to do so, despite hapiness or perceived fulfillment.

>>5692195
You made me lol, you're cute.

>>5692195
>>5692200
>freedom
>lol
>[insert generalization of Zionists here]

>>5692221
Come one, I know I some times make weird sentences with the whole second language deal but it's not a weird concept. The things you take as normal and common sense were taught to you, they were different 50 years ago, 200 years ago and 20,000 thousand years ago. Your concept of freedom is tied to the things you are allowed to do, there's a ton of things you won't do not because you aren't free to do them but because you have learned that they are wrong, from putting a fork in the electrical socket or eating rotten meat to breaking into your neighbors house. In the same way the people in BNW felt the things they did as natural and not coerced at all. I mean, the novel takes for granted that you'll understand that and you'll consider that particular take on the concept of a stable utilitarian society.

It's HS level stuff.

We, by Zamyatin

>mfw 1984 and Brave New World stole from We and yet We is the least popular

The Machine Stops by EM Forster is really good and pretty much any 4channer should read it. Dystopian verging on apocalyptic, very prophetic in re IT.

The World Inside by Robert Silverberg is also pretty cool portrait of totally functional dystopian society somewhat in the "Stand on Zanzibar" vein, but much more so.

>>5692103
Hey, I'm reading 1984 right now.

>>5692228
That sounds pretty general. Every choice I make is weighted, not predetermined. Sociological garbage.

>>5692133
This. What other reasons is there to create a dystopic image of the future if not to criticize the present?

...

>>5692111

Anon, you're a fucking retard.

>>5692261
This

>>5692249
You're so cute being dense on purpose!
Of course its weighted, on a system that's been constructed by the context in which you grew up. No one said anything about having no choice, just that the ones you can think up are based on indoctrination and learning.

>>5692274
Human intelligence is not based on indoctrination. I can sit and think and think and discuss and eventually my paradigm will be wide enough to move past that. How do you think we evolve as a people? By thinking thoughts and making choices based on others?

>>5692261
So you're saying that if I use a middle ages setting I'm forced to comment on the present? There's no way of extrapolating the present without making a critic?
I think you have a very limited idea of what a setting can do, probably fed more by high budget movies than anything else.

>>5692291
I don't understand how you relate the concept of societal evolution to personal evolution without the middle step of societal influence. If you were born with the capacity to conjure up all the knowledge achieved by humanity I think you should be doing better things than posting in 4chan. We, lesser beings, have to learn ideas and critically process them to use them or pass them on to others; and we do that from the sources available to us trying to understand the influences we had during a time in which we weren't able to create critical thinking.

>implying we don't live in a socialist utopia

I'm not even joking, I believe that we do

>>5692324
>Thinking that utopia is achievable
Literally worst than early modernists.

>>5692313
Societal influence is just that: influence. I'm not saying derive all of history's mathematics and philosophies, but critical thinking on the subject of ONE choice doesn't encompass all that much except what you know and the reasoning abilities to expand or redact on the subject.

>>5692333
>thinking we live in a dystopia
reddit has whole subs dedicated to bitching about internet freedom

also mfw i love modernism

>>5692302
>So you're saying that if I use a middle ages setting I'm forced to comment on the present?

You can't help but. Look at Lord of the Rings and then at A Song of Ice and Fire. Don't the differences between those works reflect, in part, the different sensibilities of their respective eras?

>There's no way of extrapolating the present without making a critic?

Not really. Even the most detached narratives of the future, Stapledon's Last and First Men for example, will inevitably be informed by the mores and purported truths of the time.

This is not some failing of the genre or something. It arises from exactly the same principle which suggests that works of fiction *generally* are in part the products of the times they were written in.

>I think you have a very limited idea of what a setting can do

I think you should spend more time defending your case and less time speculating about what led those who disagree with you to such egregious error.

>>5692338
>>5692324

No-one 'lives in' a utopia or a dystopia. It's like saying "We live in a fictional realm."

>>5692335
Your critical thinking is based on structures that you were born into and raised through. I'm not understanding how you think people can have opposing views if all critical thinking is inherent to the human being and always points in the same direction.

>>5692366
Different ways of thinking and different lines of logic exist, do they not? Its not all as linear as you say, my friend.

>>5692338
Woah, cool the jets, pal.
Do you even know what utopia means?

>>5692348
Thanks for not pointing out I should had written "critique" there.

I think your problem is that you're getting stuck particularly in cheap shots at the genre and confusing can, tends to and should.
For example:
>Day of the Triffids
The setting serves to present how people would deal with a certain challenging situation, there's no connection between that scenario and real life.

>Alphaville
There is a possible future presented, but there's no commentary on the process to get there and there is no comparison between that world and the current one. It's just a different thing.

>Le Dernier Combat
The setting is a dystopic future where society has crumbled and people have lost the ability to speak. The characters just have a sort of routine life among the scraps with some mild adventure in it.

And you can list any kind of story that uses the setting for
>Analyzing the character's psyche
>Presenting how humans would deal with certain extreme conditions
>Re contextualize themes and topics that have fallen out of vogue.

Your idea of a needed moralization on a certain level, albeit usual, is far from obligatory.

>>5692380
And you think that comes from? Different brain mappings? Please try to close your arguments with a certain idea otherwise I have to fill too many gaps.

>>5692404
>I think your problem is

>>5692348
>I think you should spend more time defending your case and less time speculating about what led those who disagree with you to such egregious error.

>>5692404
>cheap shots at the genre

>>5692348
>This is not some failing of the genre or something.

>The setting serves to present how people would deal with a certain challenging situation, there's no connection between that scenario and real life.

The triffids are suspected to have been engineered by the USSR (there is even a mention of Lysenkoism). The meteor shower is speculated to have actually been an accidental triggering of orbiting weapons.

Alphaville is an explicitly political and philosophical work, pitting a pulp fiction character (Lemmy Caution) whose genesis is grounded in American pulp fiction (Caution as a character is not original to Godard, is what I'm saying) against a future-dystopic milieu which reflects Godard's criticisms of his contemporary surroundings.

Le Dernier Combat? Gosh, yes, no Cold War influence there.

>needed moralization

What?

>>5692407
Okay then how about this...
We are influenced by society and that affects how we think. We need to develop a means for critical thinking and that comes from many different sources, mostly from childhood but from a lot of our experiences as well. Not only are these factors but also our locations geographically, our existences chronologically, and our different perceptions and outlooks on life and society. I would even argue personality has a big impact on that. You can say all you want that our scope of ideas are heavily limited by

>>5692407
an unknowable number of factors or variables, but that doesn't change that as human beings our brain's capacity is vast and if we don't have the means to internalize, convey, or otherwise present a concept that we will adapt eventually and think outside the box. Thats why the Bernards get sent to an island; because even if you control thought strictly it wont be enough.
And, yes, in some cases mapping could be a factor, but I'm not going to defend that here.

>>5692407
Sir, you deserve a full conversation but I must leave for work. May the wind blow at your back.

>>5692434
Wait, what did you mean with all the quoting? Are you new to 4chan or is this some kind of insult form other board that it's gonna get big soon?

Still. You brough up conections with context and referenced material. I don't see how being part of a context necesarily means commenting on it.

>which reflects Godard's criticisms of his contemporary surroundings.
As far as I understand it to reflects how he saw parts of the world mixed with how he though it should. Proposing an alternative world is not making a critique on the current one. if I say you could have a blond girlfriend I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a brunette one, I'm saying it could be a certain way.

Your mentions of cold war context are also pretty needless. They also have cars, because cars were big at the moment, it isn't a commentary on fordism though.

>>5692446
>Proposing an alternative world is not making a critique on the current one.

Not necessarily (though often) 'a critique', but a reflection.

>if I say you could have a blond girlfriend I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a brunette one

No, but you *are* saying that I do not presently have a blonde girlfriend.

Are you all this ones? Are you sort of new to 4chan or /lit/? the thread will be here for days, don't worry too much.
>>5692436
>>5692440
The initial point was that your defense of BNW being a distopia because they aren't free is based on your idea of freedom, and it's different from the idea they have. They do a pretty limited amount of things, but that was just Huxley being straight forward with what he wanted to tell, if another writer more interest in setting took that universe he could add a lot of things inside of that same logic.
Bernard is sent to the island for being an envious fuck, he wanted acceptance like most people in real life do. Helmholtz was not only happy to be sent there but he also never connected with the foreign feelings John had.
The whole point is showing a society that doesn't control through prohibition but through persuasion and happiness, and arguing about the wrongs of pure happiness. But at the end even Huxley recognized that for some that is much more than what they get from our flawed and more open society.

If it ends looking like a cardboard world it's just that Huxley didn't want to devote his life to presenting a potential world of tomorrow, you have to assume the life in that future has a wider variety of things to do and values to have or you'll get bothered by all the wrong things and get an impression not out of the topic but out of the approach the writer had.

>>5692442
>Sir
You're mean!

>>5692463
Don't you see the difference between pointing an alternative and saying that it should or will be like that?
Godard isn't saying that that's a possible future if we continue like we are, and he isn't saying that that's the future we should have; he's presenting his views in the form of a film, it's an essay using the genres of pulp and science fiction as medium.

Let me remind you that your point was
>What other reasons is there to create a dystopic image of the future if not to criticize the present?
And I'm presenting a few possible uses of the resources outside of it.

>>5692481
>Don't you see the difference between pointing an alternative and saying that it should or will be like that?

I do see that. What I don't see is the bearing it has on what I've been saying.

>Godard isn't saying that that's a possible future if we continue like we are, and he isn't saying that that's the future we should have

Again, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the work arises in part from and bears the hallmarks of the time in which it was produced.

>Let me remind you that your point was

That wasn't me, that was the guy who quoted me and said 'This'.

>>5692490
Then I hope you understand how dumb it is to talk with someone without letting them know that you are presenting a new point.

Yes, of course every single human construction is tied to the context where it was born.

>>5692475
I guess all ill say to that is...

Yes, I'm new to /lit/. This is my first post.

Let's ignore freedom as an individual's idea and tear it down to its rudiments. Their thought is hindered in an unnatural way. How do we know it is unnatural? Because all people are literally engineered in a certain way. Body and mind. Hindrance beyond natural means.

Lastly, I've no intention to be mean. You are anonymous here. Youre breasts are unseeable to me, your penis implied.

>>5692506

It's not a new point, I made it in >>5692133.

But you don't seem to be listening at all, so whatever.

>>5692520
You have to understand that Buxley grew up in a time in which a huge part of Britain worked in factories and lived in absolute shit, just because they were born in a certain class without any chance of potential growth. There's little difference between making babies and turning them into freaks than letting them grow naturally in places full of led, smoking the fumes of factories that had no regulation and with parents getting drunk the old way while pregnant. From his point of view there's little difference between a government that lets that happen to its gain and one that actively produces that. He was just extrapolating the extreme utilitarian view of those conditions. It was a modernist utopia that opened the way to postmodern destruction of meta discourses, it's the utopia that you're not sure if you'd want no matter your position.

A general rule for 4chan: the only people who jokingly bring up their gender are traps.

>>5692545
If you aren't sure you'd want it then its not utopian.

And everyone here has a penis, im sure.

>>5692536
Okay, I'm sorry, i mixed you with the other anon. It happens, no need to get mad.
>All depictions of the future are interrogations of the present in one form or another.
Yes, completly true. But you're assuming that all science fiction is a depiction of the future, and that's not always the case. Some times SF is used as a backdrop for other topics, like personal introspection. You're assuming that depicting a future always requieres extrapolating present times; but not only you don't necessarily have to do that to present a SF world, but you also can extrapolate without presenting a future.

I'm sorry for going into anime, but I just have this titles more present in my mind at the moment:
>Pluto
It introduces robots as a means to consider the human condition, but the way the robots were included into the human world bares no connection with modern times and it doesn't try to justify itself as a potential outcome of present times. It just is.
>Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō
It's a post apocaliptic world, it isn't explored how it happened even if it's sugested. There is no interest in building a conection between that outcome and the elements that got the world there, but it takes time to show how the characters live in that particular space.

BUT, to the later point you brught up: Yes, of course a work will comment on it's times by simple virtue of being born in them. But that's a characteristic of human constructions and it's beyond the point.

>>5692570
>But you're assuming that all science fiction is a depiction of the future

No, I'm not. I mentioned extrapolation expressly because the specific work being discussed happens to be set in the future.

>>5692574
Let me correct my phrasing, it's hard going back through the conversation.

You seem to be assuming that all depictions of the future are extrapolations of the present.

>>5692586
And I over abused "you're assuming" which is a horrible thing to use since it automatically makes you sound like an asshole forcing a "correct" take. I'm as sorry as I'm sleepy.

>>5692103
>Dystopian lit
What are you, twelve?

>>5692586
>You seem to be assuming that all depictions of the future are extrapolations of the present.

Well, yes, 'in one form or another'.

>>5692103
>>>/reddit/

>>5692684
>i form my opinions on the basis of vertical comic strips i read on the internet

>>5692684
>>5692597
This shit is getting really, really old.

>>5692698
>i make unwarranted greentext generalizations because i feel insulted by a vertical comic strip i read on the internet

>>5692719
>redditposting
>argumentum ad comicium internetam

Virtually no insult aimed at you is 'unwarranted'. I could accuse you of having to wear diapers and it would be plausible.

>>5692735
Kek, looks like someone's rectumrazzled. Why don't you come back here when you're 18, kid, this board is for adults.

>>5692782
>Kek, looks like someone's rectumrazzled

It sure does.

>>5692714
Dystopias are really easy to market to teens and they practically write themselves. Previously authors that aimed at that demographic had some sort of feeling that they should be saying something, but that has been brushed aside by now.

>>5694184

OP made it pretty clear he was mostly concerned with the classics of the genre.

If you want dystopian literature just read the newspapers.

>>5692684
I'd read that