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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

1984, and all that

lonely as a cloud...

10:21 / 13.02.06

On a smoke break, I was thinking about the fiction I'd read for my Irish exams, many years ago. One short story on the curriculum was called An Dúchasach Deireanach - The Last Native - and was a hilariously dreadful tale of the last Kerryman in the world.

The hero of the tale was called something like FZD-182 - who drank water that tasted of chemicals because, due to the world running out of water, they had to make it out of oil, and who ate food in pill form. He was in love with BZD-173 (or something similar), but, alas, their love was forbidden, as FZD-182 was supposed to marry BZD-182 (all the women's names began with a B, the men with F - the Irish for woman being "bean" the Irish for man is "fear" - note that "ea" in Irish is pronounced like "ah"). Both our hero and his beloved worked for the ministry of culture (or something similar), who were systematically banning all languages but Irish, and trying to eradicate all art and individuality.

In this context, they come across a specimen from Kerry, a man dressed in tweed, and had a tin whistle and a bottle of poitin (illegaly distilled Irish spirit) in his pockets. In other words, a stereotyped Irish country-man. I can't remember what else happened, but the three of them (FZD, his beloved and the Kerryman) escaped in the Kerryman's currach (small row-boat made of tanned leather stretched over a wooden skeleton) - from somewhere in Italy all the way to Kerry.

So, anyway, that got me thinking - to me, 1984 would be the canonical dystopian-future novel, but can anybody suggest what the original would be? Have you any similar novels to recommend or to slate?

13:21 / 13.02.06

Well, according to my best friend Wikipedia, dystopia was coined by John Stuart Mills. One of the first dytopian novels was A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder by James De Mille, about an imaginary semi-tropical land in Antarctica inhabited by prehistoric monsters and a cult of death-worshippers.

Another early example is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The story is told by the protagonist, "D-503", in his diary, which details both his work as a mathematician and his misadventures with a resistance group called the Mephi, who take their name from Mephistopheles.

Here's a a list of dystopian fiction from Wikipedia.

Here's a not bad paper not bad paper on dystopian fiction.

20:18 / 13.02.06

perhaps the original dystopian novel is, paradoxically, more's 'utopia'...?

in describing a utopia for the first time (one not premised on eden, that is) more inversely criticised the society in which he found himself, inverting the paradigm of dystopia he was to found and, in this light, is perhaps more of a horror tale than many dystopian novels! [and he did it nonconsciously, probably]

houellebecq is dystopian - 'possibility of an island' is an astonishing book. that'd be my pick for one at the orwell end of the scale.

21:24 / 13.02.06

The first thing that springs to mind - not a novel, though - is Harlan Ellison's marvellous "Repent, Harlequin Said The Tick Tock Man" which wins points and points over 1984 just by being bloody funny.

Sorry for the short post but I've been in the pub.

21:32 / 13.02.06

I'll second the Ellison story and suggest 'The Ticket That Exploded' by William Burroughs. Dystopian satire and stately mirror, exploded all over the place and is a sense the enemy of its own message. The act of being protagonist, in that novel, say from the prison-escape onward, it to become manifestly the antagonistic element. To paraphrase roughly: "Did you ever think this was about anything other than me and you?" And that's somebody's thought to themself.

the real anti christ

02:53 / 01.03.06

We is the shit. That aside I enjoyed A Brave New World despite Huxley’s awful Stephen King tendencies. I always felt a common theme in all these negative utopians society’s was the love factor. I would be interested to read one without romance. Perhaps Love is a uniquely human emotion that defines us as individuals therefore deifying perfectly the governments of all those types of works.

03:10 / 01.03.06

Welcome, real anti christ.

Perhaps a reason why the authors of dystopian fiction are interested in love is because governments generally have a lack of love for their people?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:33 / 24.03.06

Illmatic: The first thing that springs to mind - not a novel, though - is Harlan Ellison's marvellous "Repent, Harlequin Said The Tick Tock Man" which wins points and points over 1984 just by being bloody funny.

Bump.

I found an old "Nebula Award Winners" paperback from 1969 on the weekend, and Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman was in it. I'd read it before -- maybe six years ago? -- and I read it again. Brilliant. I love that the Harlequin never bothers with violent revolution, favouring instead the bizarre and antic attacks like the jellybeans. The jelly bean sequence is, I think, one of the best scenes in a story I've ever read. Sure, it was just pop sci-fi or something but it's still brilliant art...there's no happy ending but it's certainly...ambivalent. Reading the story kind of soured me on watching V for Vendetta because all I'll be able to think about is, well, how fun the revolution could have been.

It is, on the "love question," oddly devoid of it. The Harlequin has a girlfriend, or a wife, or "pretty Alice" back home, angry with him for always being late and throwing off the schedule. But there is an element of expectation there, as it's part of the regulated schedule to have a regulation relationship without much emotion there. There's another family mentioned and it illustrates it better - the wife is quite relieved that her husband is being terminated and not her, only there is some love there, if so destroyed and mixed up with society's schedule -- she's fairly miserable to have felt that way...

Ninjas make great pets

16:25 / 25.03.06

ah yes the last kerry man story.. what a load of 'desparate to reach the kiddies' muck that was. I knew 'brave new world' was familiar when I read it years later but I had completly wiped the kerryman from my mind by then.

the oldest dystopian future book?

cop-out for humours sake answer - the bible. I mean a future of fire from the sky in which only the truly faithful will be saved? smashing.

My favourite has to be Farenheit 451. (sorry never actually read the book. for shame). I was young when I saw the film but parts of it stayed with me. The idea of the living books. almost a throw back to dream time story tellers and shan-a-cis (I've gotten that word so wrong. someone please correct my irish). The word of mouth method of keeping art(s) alive is something even then I felt was being lost.

17:05 / 26.03.06

Farenheit 451 is an excellent book, it's dead wee, more of a novella really, but brilliant throughout. *threadrot* Have we ever had a Ray Bradbury thread? *end threadrot*

18:58 / 26.03.06

Cest nais pas une ninja: Seanachaì would be the singular. I've never seen it pluralised, though, and seanachaìanna just looks wrong.

00:56 / 07.04.06

Margaret Atwwod's the handmaid tale. A film version was made I think It deals a lot with gender issues in addition to the usual let's find a way out of the system...

Happy Dave Has Left

13:55 / 21.04.06

Here's a weird one, a young adult book called 'FutureTrack 5. It's like Orwell for kids, seriously - I remember reading it when I was about 10 or so, and it seriously turning me on to dystopian fiction in general.

I'd probably reread it now and think it was dire, but I remember it had some pretty weird shit in it, including posh Eloi-like people spying on thick 'Fen-dwellers' they were breeding, like some kind of giant Coronation Street. Oh yeah, and it has motorbikes. Lots and lots of motorbikes.

23:43 / 21.04.06

Swastica Night was first published in the 1930s over a decade before Orwell's 1984. It was claimed by one Murray Constantine, a pen name for it's quthor Katherine Burdekin. This is kind of a 'Handmaids Tale' crossed with 'Man in the high tower', but set in Europe hundreds of years into a Nazi future. A woman-less world where men are lauded for their brutality and women are reduced to breading stock.