Archive: 8 posts

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Somebody might have made a thread like this earlier, but heck with it. I was reading Fahrenheit 451 the other day, which is an awesome book, and as I read that part where Captain Beatty monologues to Montag about the state of society and how it came to be this way. Basically, he says: 1. Minority pressure has influenced the news and entertainment media to become less controversial and more unoffensive and bland. Say, pressure from from Christians influence a movie about religion to be more favorable to it, while Atheists pressure the movie to be less favorable, so the movie just drops religion altogether. 2. The public began to embrace mass market and media more and more, showing more support for movies and TV shows with higher budgets and more marketing behind them. Books, which are usually not advertised, drift out of popularity, except for comics and magazines. 3. Life grows faster and faster paced, which is complimented as progress. People become much more social. People look more to TV and magazines as quick entertainment, as well as act social with friends a lot more. Being solitary is considered weird. Books, since you usually read them alone, and since they are not usually quick entertainment, fall out of the public eye. All this causes the public to shun books, leading them to pressure the government to create firemen, who burn books. While this isn't likely to happen, it could. People are showing the internet a lot of attention, spending ludicrous amounts of time on TV and social networks, but we are still reading books. Let's share all our dystopian novels which we think could actually happen. Like, we're actually scared it might happen.

2012-03-29 15:11:00 Author: Kalawishis Posts: 928

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Technically most dystopian novels can happen if the right events take place. When I get back from school, I'll go into more detail about some of my favorites. (It's my favorite genre! )

2012-03-29 16:24:00 Author: Speedynutty68 Posts: 1614

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Here's an interesting article about mice: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/42/wiles.php Vogt, Ehrlich, and the others were neo-Malthusians, arguing that population growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural resources, leading to starvation and conflict. But there was no scarcity of food and water in Calhoun?s universe. The only thing that was in short supply was space. This was, after all, ?heaven??a title Calhoun deliberately used with pitch-black irony. The point was that crowding itself could destroy a society before famine even got a chance. In Calhoun?s heaven, hell was other mice. So what exactly happened in Universe 25? Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed ?the beautiful ones,? never sought sex and never fought?they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.

2012-03-29 17:58:00 Author: Ayneh Posts: 2454

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Two words: grey goo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo).

2012-03-29 19:03:00 Author: Aya042 Posts: 2870

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This will pretty much become a discussion about the possibility of nuclear war happening. I'm thinking more about the Deus Ex kind of dystopias. Technology evolving at a faster rate than society and politics can adapt to and eventually spiraling out of control.

2012-03-29 20:47:00 Author: SnipySev Posts: 2452

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This will pretty much become a discussion about the possibility of nuclear war happening. Can't forget about economic collapse, doomsday, and raging viruses!

2012-03-29 23:57:00 Author: Speedynutty68 Posts: 1614

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I agree with speedy on any of them being possible. Anything from 1984, Brave New World, um, that one with the strong people carrying sacks of sand and beautiful people wearing masks (i'll get back on the title), The Giver, and so on. Stratification is a universal aspect of modern societies. The Giver and that other book I can't think of happen when those societies try to make everyone equal by handicapping anyone who is better in any way. Again, it seems unlikely any of these could happen, but sometimes it's eerie to see some parts that are starting to happen today. Harrison Bergeron! That's the one!

2012-03-30 05:42:00 Author: xxMATEOSxx Posts: 1787

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Holy crap. Grey goo scared the **** out of me. I guess if the world becomes too overcrowded, the big cities could be like Universe 25. We have to admit this (cheesy Animal Farm reference alert): all dystopias are possible, but some dystopias are more possible than others. 1984 can't ever happen, since the year 1984 has come and gone (and brought the Macintosh with it). However, there still is a slight chance that the world will become 3 communist states (very, very slight). If North Korea goes berserk and teams up with China...probably not going to happen. The Hunger Games; I doubt that's ever going to happen in real life. That the government will create a huge, extremely expensive arena every single year (maybe they used district peoples as slaves, but still. Its like building a huge Olympic stadium every year and filling it with death traps), hold in it events which cause a gut reaction of disgust and terror, and yet have relatively little criticism from the Capitol people-it is never explained. I don't know if it's brainwashing, or simply human savagery, or what. I wished that the Hunger Games series was more elaborating about its world, but Collins leaves a lot to the imagination. I would have loved to learn more about the Capitol and the more obsolete districts, but that might have been difficult for her to write in. What I really like about books like Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World is that the dystopia doesn't come from a poor standard of living or physical pain (novels like Hunger Games or 1984, the characters have a pretty low standard of living, and they both suffer a lot of physical pain), but from emotional standpoints. Bernard and Helmholtz from Brave New World actually had excellent standards of living, and they hardly ever suffered physical pain, but they were emotional dissatisfied (maybe it was only Helmholtz who was upset at the society, Bernard only wanted to be more popular). Montag from Fahrenheit 451 had a pretty average living standard compared to the middle class American, with little physical pain, but he was emotionally dissatisfied as well. The government wasn't evil or out to kill you, there were no apocalypses, but they were still dystopias. What I don't like about some dystopian books is that they constantly use physical pain and suffering as a means to make dystopia, and little else. Has anybody here read the Maze Runner series? At least every 3-5 chapters, somebody gets violently injured or killed. Eventually, you get so bored with the violence that you just want to shut the book every time something violent happens. That almost happened in Catching Fire. When Peeta and Katniss were watching the Quarter Quell, the violence was so continuous and...well violent, that I actually found myself laughing. I couldn't take any more violent parts in the rest of the book seriously.

2012-03-30 15:01:00 Author: Kalawishis Posts: 928

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