Mystopia.

When I was in college, I took an English class called Utopias and Dystopias. At that time the term dystopia wasn't nearly as well known as it is now; in fact, another English professor I had asked me to define the term when I mentioned the class. Utopia and dystopia as words are not natural antipodes; utopia came from Greek and just means no (ou) place (topos), where dystopia means bad place. 

But we all knew about dystopias, man. Everyone in the liberal arts majors was expecting the world to end, almost certainly in a shootout between the Americans and the Russians. And it'd be America's fault! And those fascists on the right would take over whatever was left! 

I was thinking about that after fellow Bleatnik Mark Ingram posted this meme on the comments of the Great Lileks's site: 

It made me think that sure, if we follow today's wickedness and stupidity to the end of the line, this satirical take is all too likely. But on the other hand, the future, for good or ill, never turns out the way we prophesy. Sometimes the projections even look silly in retrospect. I'm temped to call these miscues mystopias, kind of an eggcorn of a name, but why not.

It was not uncommon, for example, in the eighties to imagine a mallworld, in which all of humanity is reduced to nothing more than consumers and producers, and everyone is glued to the TV. In fact, Somtow Sucharitkul, who wrote a lot for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in those days, did a whole series of stories published as a book called Mallworld. Sucharitkul is a terrific writer and is not to be faulted for failing to foresee that the malls would be closing and retailers panicking. 

This was similar to the consumerist hell future seen in Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! comic books and the short-lived Max Headroom TV series. Fortunately, the future's not what it used to be. However, one common thread is these works is that government and commercial enterprises are constantly conspiring to screw over the people. Maybe that bit isn't so far-fetched.

I think it says something about humanity that we have more fictional dystopias than utopias. It's always easier to imagine hell than heaven. So it's probably good that our predictions don't ever quite hit the coffin nail on the head.

While many fictional dystopias are terrible societies (as in We, 1984, The Man in the High Castle, and so on) some are just dead. Yes, good ol' apocalypse, where straggling humans try to survive in the wasteland of the world. I think of these as thanatopias, or death worlds. Back in the day you could rely on World War III to provide the mass deaths, although alien invasion was a good standby. Artificial intelligence has also moved up the ranks as our computers have gotten smarter. Ecological disaster has marched right up to the front. Disease, especially man-made disease, was another good one. In fact, we have just seen a man-made disease jump the lab and kill millions, so it's hard to not find that as the most plausible means of annihilation going at the moment.

Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the atomic deathwatch clock ten seconds up, closer to the midnight doom time than ever before. Despite Russia's failure in the battlefield and desperation to win at all costs, and the saber-rattling of China, and Iran's desperation to get the bomb, I find it hard to believe that we're closer to nuclear war now than we were at the height of the Cold War. I think the Bulletin is just getting lonely for attention since Chinese Death Virus stole all the headlines. I certainly hope so, anyway.