​Dystopian fiction offers a speculative glimpse of the future, one often experiencing a cataclysmic decline, with characters battling their way through environmental ruin, technological control, and government oppression. As a sub-genre of science fiction, the popular dystopian novel can challenge readers’ views about current social and political climates, offer warnings, and in some instances, inspire action. But how is dystopian fiction determined? First, let’s define the difference between the utopian and dystopian world.

What’s the Difference Between Utopia and Dystopia?

When Sir Thomas More coined the term “utopia” in his 1516 book Utopia, he was inadvertently shaping centuries of genre. With the advent of Utopia, which was about an ideal society on a fictional island, the dystopia was born.

Unlike utopian literature, dystopian literature explores and warns of the dangerous effects of political and social structures on humanity (Hugh Howey’s Wool Trilogy) , and what led the society to the totalitarian outcomes and the difficulty of correcting the situation. Often there’s no way back, and the character’s needs are striped down to their basic survival (Aral Bereux’s J Rae Books).

Utopian literature, on the other hand, often focuses on the individual and societal cost of maintaining a perfect world. Usually one individual’s sacrifice is necessary for the utilitarian society to flourish (Ursula Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas), or there may be a hidden secret that must never be revealed (Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars and Childhood’s End).

What Is the Significance of Dystopian Fiction?

Margaret Atwood once said, “If you’re interested in writing speculative fiction, one way to generate a plot is to take an idea from current society and move it a little further down the road. Even if humans are short-term thinkers, fiction can anticipate and extrapolate into multiple versions of the future.”

The significance of dystopian fiction on literature can vary from educating and warning humanity about current social and political structures, to reflecting an author’s beliefs on the pitfalls of society (H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine), to critiquing behaviorism (Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange), and cautioning on oppressive regimes (Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Orwell’s 1984).

5 Characteristics of Dystopian Fiction

Often times, dystopian novels focus on central themes that generally fall under these topics:

1. Government control
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Specifically, there is either no government or an authoritarian ruling body. The most contemporary portrayal of the Government Control feature is Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy.

Collins’ The Hunger Games takes place in a future nation built on the ruins of North America. The fictional Panem is ruled by President Snow’s totalitarian government, the Capitol. Just as our own society amasses vast amounts of wealth into the top one percent, Collins’ Capitol holds most of Panem’s wealth and uses this to control its citizens.

Each year, two children from Panem’s 12 poverty-stricken districts are mandatorily selected to participate in a televised death match called the Hunger Games.

George Orwell’s 1984 also presents the reader with a world under complete government control, known as the omnipresent surveillance of Big Brother, which enforces complete control over the citizens of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia – the three inter-continental superstates remaining after a world war.

2. Loss of individualism

The dangers of conformity are often written into classic dystopias like 1984. How should the needs of society as a whole compare to the individual needs? Authors writing in the dystopian genre will need to keep this question in mind.
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Two examples are Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, written in 1953, and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.

Fahrenheit 451 explores the censorship of books in a future society where increased technology and mindless entertainment dominate. The idea? To save the citizen from the misery of thinking freely, critiquing life, or being creative.

We , written in 1920, follows a spacecraft engineer living in One State. The citizens of One State wear uniforms and are referred to by number, and are forever refused privacy or individual belief.

3. Environmental destruction

Often set in places that are inhabitable, the dystopian environmental story documents a warning of impending destruction.

The one dystopian novel that comes to mind when discussing this characteristic, is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Written in 2006, the post-apocalyptic tale documents a father and son’s journey of survival to a more hospitable environment in which to live after an extinction-level event wipes out their old life.

James Dashner’s The Maze Runner series also chronicles the events of how a world is destroyed by solar flares and coronal mass ejection. In the first book, a group of teenage boys are stuck in The Glade and have to find their way of out of an ever-changing maze.

4. Technological control

In a dystopian novel, the advancement of science and technology goes far beyond providing tools for improving everyday life. In this particular take of dystopia, technology is depicted as a controlling, ubiquitous and inescapable force which creates fear-mongering tactics and a subservient culture. Oftentimes, the government can be seen herding the people like sheep.

Two standout authors capture this terrifying characteristic in the form of authoritarian bureaucracy: Huxley and Philip K. Dick.

Philip K. Dick’s 1968 short novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? takes place in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco where android robots are indistinguishable from humans, and mass extinction has led to artificial animals. Although it is supposed that the main character hunts down rogue AI before they can assimilate into society, the novel leaves the reader wondering if the protagonist is himself a sophisticated android hunting down the lesser AI, and if humanity was driven to extinction.

Philip K. Dick also warned of artificial intelligence advancements in Minority Report, where the Department of Pre-Crime looks into the future to arrest potential criminals before they actually commit a crime.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was written in 1932, and explores the danger of advancing technology too quickly. In the novel, the ruling World State uses powerful artificial reproduction conditioning technologies to control citizen class and actions.

All three books have since been adapted to film and streaming services.

5. Survival

Dystopian and even utopian worlds require some level of survival to be built into the narrative. Innate to the dystopian world are its inhabitants fending for themselves after a complete or almost complete destruction and devastation of their world.
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One instance of survival is found in the pages of an early Stephen King novel, The Running Man. Written and first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982, the novel takes place in 2025 and follows the story of an impoverished man living under an oppressive government. The protagonist is to compete on a life-threatening game show to earn money to care for his family.

Publishing in a world today, where the market is saturated by wannabes and talent, is growing increasingly difficult. Navigating your way around the industry has never been more difficult, contrary to all the self-help blogs out there.
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Instead, the contemporary publishing industry is a diverse environment of complex trade sector trends and arising challenges, something that most self-published authors struggle to grasp. Despite this, the author as publisher must consider marketing trends and professional networks if any moderate amount of success is to be achieved. How these networks and practices influence the role of marketing (one of the single most important strategies to guarantee author success), coupled with the author’s role in promoting the book, and how product placement sees the book into the hands of a ‘gatekeepers’ will inevitably determine success.

​It’s a long-winded process, with no short cuts available. What was once an industry of traditional printing, publishing, and bookselling, straightforward in its procedures, is now a series of complex relationships interdependent with one another—and difficult to negotiate.
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Vying for market and customers in an exceedingly competitive industry equates no longer to the publishing industry being a ‘straight-forward’ author-publisher-distributor relationship. The new trends and challenges are unprecedented, and with price wars between billion-dollar franchises like Amazon, Kmart and Walmart selling books below cost to entice customers through doors, the logistics of publishing an author to success are becoming increasingly challenging.

​Once Upon A Time…
The contemporary publishing industry trends traditionally relied on several interwoven industries, but with the event of technology, some of these are changing. Publishing is and has only ever been one part of the complex relationship (though integral) of producing a text, whereas printing, the logistics of marketing, distributing and book selling—whether digital or in bricks and mortar stores—and the authoring of the book also play crucial roles in the success of publishing.
The publishing world has long engaged with agents, proof-readers, editors, and marketers, as well as sales representatives, illustrators, and publicists, but not until recently has the industry directly engaged with its consumers to survive. A move driven largely by independent publishing.

​The importance of the publishing companies’ engagement with the consumer—and this includes the self-published multitasking author who dons the publishing and marketing hats—is vital for success. By treating the publisher as the gatekeepers to young readers, librarian Karys McEwen stresses that marketing is vital for generating genuine interest, and influences the type of book purchased for the high school libraries she works in.

Ventura Press publisher Jane Curry agrees that marketing is the crux of the industry. The publishing business exists purely to make a profit. The bigger you are as a publisher the more likely profits are made.
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It is a common theme within the industry no matter who you are. The contemporary publishing industry now pushes the smaller and medium-sized publishers into increasingly niche markets, to compete against global giants like Penguin Random House and Hachette. Only the most switched on independent publishers succeed.

​The book selling industry is depressing. It isn’t for the faint-hearted, and sometimes talent simply doesn’t count as much as the marketing.

However, it isn’t all bad news for the author. The development of new media flooding the market has a silver lining, explains editors Anabel Pandiella and Tom Saras. They highlight how professional networks are reliant on collaborations which result from new media, and how streaming platforms and well-placed entertainment magazines enhance this. Reflecting on their collaboration with Who magazine to “host book clubs for Who readers”, Saras saw an increase of author’s sales. Pandiella, who promoted a novel by partnering with an SBS streaming platform, also saw an increase of up to 30 percent in author’s sales. Professional book publishing networks are essential for success.
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However, in the current climate of self-publishing—a result of publishing due largely to discontent in earnings and the inability to secure a publishing contract—presents the question of what remains of the role of the author?
Tasked to doing most of the work themselves, the evolution of large-scale self-publishing has changed the face of the author’s role in publishing, even in a traditional setting with a publisher. Editing, marketing, and the author’s ability to maintain their own webpages, and other digital promotion is now commonplace for authors of any fashion. The alternative self-publishing mode has created a publisher’s requirement that an author must have some proof of ‘membership’ within the literary community through these tools and networking, even if it is minimal.

​The role of the author in marketing is crucial to the success of sales. The author’s “genuine” involvement with their books when marketing on social media platforms, attributes some publishing success to the author’s display of authenticity for the public to identify with. This becomes more important if what Pandiella suggests is occurring with notable consumer interest dropping away from the Internet and digital marketing.

The saturation of digital marketing creates a difficult online environment for marketers and publicists to negotiate; suggesting the importance of a ‘personable’ author to boost revenues via social capable—an approachable author online and off. The crucial role of publishers—large and independent ones—in promotional capacity is essential.
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The author’s role is to maintain the professional networks within the publishing industry and to maintain them in a rapidly evolving publishing environment.