I’ve been consuming dystopian science fiction ever since I was around sixteen years old. Want to know the truth? These novels, films, and games are slowly driving me insane.
Okay, maybe not insane. Scarred? Perhaps. But truthfully I enjoy living on edge.
Let me explain.
I first took notice when I read George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984 . A friend had told me it was “disturbing” and since I generally enjoy that sort of thing I dove right in.
Holy shit was it ever a mindfuck.
Don’t get me wrong – I knew the concept. We live in a world where our cell phones are little tracking devices. I own an Xbox One with Kinect and that thing is listening to me talk to my friends right now! Orwell had simply made me realise these things by painting a grim picture of the future where none of it seemed so distant.
1984 was the beginning of a spiral that I have yet to return from. You start reading about concepts like Michel Foucault’s panopticon and all of a sudden you’re examining your own life to find examples of it. I’d find myself tweeting and Instagramming without truly posting anything unless I was sure it was worded perfectly. That’s the panopticon friends. Every like, every view, you are being watched.
Then I read Dave Eggers’ modern take on the ultimate transparency society titled The Circle. Mae Holland’s rise to power in the world’s dominant tech company was all too real for me. I work in tech. I know how these things are designed and built. We’re handing our privacy away one“How does this look?” status at a time. Use Google Maps? You are being watched. Let Netflix analyse your viewing habits? You are telling strangers about what you enjoy watching.
Actual stories of governments surveilling their citizens became more than chills running down my spine. They were nightmares.
But surveillance is the low hanging fruit. The questions I find myself asking over and over again revolve around one central theme.
What does it mean to be human?
Hands down the first time I watched Blade Runner I was hooked beyond reason. Months later I found myself thinking about Roy Batty’s final soliloquy randomly. Sure, he was a machine but was he really any less than Deckard or any of the other characters we followed? What makes us human? Consciousness? Capacity for suffering? Empathy?
If anything, Ex Machina took the entire conversation around artificial intelligence and applied the humanity theme to it perfectly.
Watching Ava manipulate Caleb into helping her escape was chilling because I found myself wondering what we owe these beings if they actually achieve sentience. We’re already thisclose to creating AI that can pass the Turing test within specific parameters. Part of my day job is quality assurance for games which involves sitting and talking to NPC’s powered by AI. What happens when those AI’s become self aware?
Sure, we have questions of morality when it comes to our own species but what about our digital counterparts? We’re actively trying to create artificial general intelligence without any consideration of how we should or should not treat it. We’re so fascinated with if we can that we aren’t asking if we should.
Brave New World was mind blowing to me because while 1984 was ruled by fear in hopes of controlling the populace, Huxley’s vision of the future was controlled by pleasure.
Loneliness and tedious labor was cured with simply popping a soma tablet. Watching Bernard and John fail to adapt to a world without suffering because they suffered far too much made me consider how many times I take out my phone to pass the time rather than feel anything.
Sure we don’t have drones flying around dispensing medication but my smartphone provides me comfort in much the same way soma provides comfort to the citizens of Brave New World. I can order food without interacting with another human being. I can watch as much Netflix as I want without leaving my couch. There’s never a dull moment in life because I have entertaining myself.
Does this make me happy? Sure. But am I happy in the same way that everyone around me is happy?
When I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale I was freshly coming to terms with how fragile our rights can be. Gone was overnight. People in the world stopped paying attention and whatever rights they did have slowly got chipped away by the government until they were handed a Gilead on a silver platter.
The election of 2016 will forever serve as bookends to that book for me. Reading about how fear was used to take away rights from half the population is terrifyingly similar to what went on during that god awful election cycle.
I found myself wondering how quickly my government could turn into Gilead if things started going south. It also made me wonder how much effort I actually put into making my voice heard. How many times have I emailed my senators? Done my civic duty and voted in local elections? Too damn long was my answer every time I asked myself these questions. Atwood’s dystopia starts with good people being too comfortable.
And while we’re on the subject of dystopian comfort…
If you haven’t watched Black Mirror then what are you doing reading this article? Seriously. Go watch it.
It all started when I watched “Nosedive.” The concept of scoring your everyday life as you go through it is literally my biggest fear with social media. Would I be a high scorer or a low scorer? Lacie spending every waking moment trying to increase her social standing was terrifyingly similar to some of the thoughts I have had while scrolling through Facebook and contemplating my own life.
Charlie Brooker has a knack for looking at modern technological trends and amplifying them to their Breaking Bad moment and Black Mirror is better for it.
“San Junipero” had me questioning digital death. “USS Callister” tackled masculinity in the digital age. “Shut Up and Dance” was a cyberpunk lesson on how our surveillance infrastructure could be used to ruin lives. Each episode of Black Mirror is craftsmanship at its finest and a dire warning about the future we could very well be accepting.
Truthfully, what scares me about all of these stories isn’t the future they’re trying to portray. A lot of these books were based on or written during scary as shit times these authors were living in. Orwell wrote about totalitarianism while Stalin was killing his own citizens. Huxley wrote Brave New World in response to the consumerism and growth of mass media. Atwood pulled directly from real life examples of oppressive theocracies for inspiration.
They looked around at their world and asked “what if?”
That right there is the beauty and horror of dystopian science fiction. It isn’t trying to predict the future. It’s holding up a mirror to modern society and asking if we let things continue to develop on this path.
Which brings me to my final fear…
Video games.
Whenever I boot up the latest AAA title these days I find myself thinking about DRM. Every new game that pushes the “always online” requirement sends a chill down my spine because eventually those intrusive microtransactions will lead to some sort of digital citizenship controlling what I am allowed to play and when.
Camera’s are being installed throughout my city right now that are fully capable of facial recognition. The next step is always online accounts for your kids to play games at school. Imagine draconian governments using your playstation plus account to control the media your children are allowed to access.
Playing games like Papers Please and This War of Mine drive this message home even more because you are put into these oppressive bureaucratic systems and forced to sit there and make decisions. Sometimes you gotta lie. Sometimes you gotta turn a blind eye.
Would I actually be able to stand up to a dystopian government? Or would I tell myself it’s for the best?
The video game industry itself is not without sin when you really start to look at it. Loot boxes preying on our psychological weaknesses. Data collection that rivals the panopticon. Platform monopolies trying to control how we express ourselves digitally.
We are laying the foundation for our own dystopian overlords and justifying it by calling it innovation and convenience.
But that’s why I continue to read these books. Watch these films. Play these games.
Every dystopian story has hope nestled somewhere inside of them.
We could change the path we are on. Sure Winston dies but he tried to fight the system. John the Savage may have kicked the bucket but he threw that Soma down in righteous defiance. The father in Papers Please can sit there and tell the immigration officer he believes his son’s story should he ever find himself in that situation.
Dystopian science fiction stories don’t drive me crazy, they motivate me.
We’re the ones with the power to change this narrative. You and I are writing the future with every click of the mouse and press of a button.
We just have to decide what story we want to tell.
Logan lives in Minneapolis with too many consoles and just enough opinions. He explores how sci-fi plays differently across games, TV, and film—celebrating great world-building and calling out lazy tropes. Expect passionate takes, sarcasm, and the occasional Mass Effect reference.