1. WHAT IS THE FUTURE?

2. 1950, AS ENVISAGED BY SOMEONE IN 1925

3. 1972, AS ENVISAGED BY SOMEONE IN 1922

4. THE FUTURE, AS ENVISAGED BY SOMEONE IN THE 1970S

5. TODAY, AS ENVISAGED BY SOMEONE IN THE 1979
(1) Giant-size TV; (2) Electronic video movie camera; (3) Flat screen TV; (4) Video disc player for recording off the TV; (5) Domestic robot; (6)Mail slot for electronic mail
TODAY, AS ENVISAGED BY SOMEONE IN THE 1979

6. THE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE

7. WHAT IS A DYSTOPIA?
Look at the QUOTATIONS from dystopian novels you have been given.
What sort of themes, plots and characteristics do you think feature in dystopian literature?
Read the DEFINITIONS you have been given.
How do these fit with the themes, plots and characteristics you picked out from the quotations?

9. Dystopia as a genre can be used to describe a place that appears perfect on the surface but is bad underneath. Sometimes this corrupt existence is known but suppressed. In other instances, the world appears to all intents to be perfect, but it is discovered as otherwise, quite often by the main character in the story.
The Capitol in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games - perfect on the surface and rotten underneath. How many residents believe they live in a utopia?
This situation can arise because, in a dystopia, the society often gives up one thing (freedom?) in exchange for something else (safety?). The benefit of the thing gained blinds the society to the loss of the other; it is often not until many years later that the loss of it is truly felt, and the citizens come to realise that the world they once thought acceptable (or even ideal) is not the world they thought it was. That’s part of what is so compelling—and insidious—about dystopian fiction: the idea that you could be living in a dystopia and not even know it.

10. Because of this, society itself is often the antagonist in dystopian fiction:
"In a dystopian story, society itself is typically the antagonist; it is society that is actively working against the protagonist’s aims and desires. This oppression frequently is enacted by a totalitarian or authoritarian government, resulting in the loss of civil liberties and untenable living conditions, caused by any number of circumstances, such as world overpopulation, laws controlling a person’s sexual or reproductive freedom, and living under constant surveillance" (Adams, 2011). 

11. THE DYSTOPIAN CANON

12. “In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was suppressed for many years in Zamyatin’s native Russia.”
Features:
The Individual Human vs. The Collective State
Conformity and loss of privacy
D-503 a reluctant rebel
Published: 1924

13. “Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...”
Features:
World State citizens preconditioned to be happy
Genetic control and predetermination of people’s lives
Safety, comfort and prosperity…but at what cost?
Contrast with “savage reservation”
Published: 1931

14. “Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.”
Features:
Doublethink, Newspeak
Mass surveillance
Thoughts are controlled utterly
Big Brother, Room
Published: 1949

15. “Guy Montag is a fireman
“Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce. But then he meets an eccentric young neighbour, Clarisse. When his wife attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.”
Features:
Books have been banned
Mass culture and conformity pervade
Firemen, the Hound
Published: 1953

16. “Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence
“Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?”
Features:
A world of “ultra violence”
Free will and the problem of Evil
“At what cost?”
Published: 1962

17. “World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated
“World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal -- the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit -- and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted . . .”
Features:
“Replicants” have surpassed humans
An environmental nightmare
Population controlled, albeit more subtly
Published: 1968

18. Most authors of dystopian fiction explore at least one reason why things are that way, often as an analogy for similar issues in the real world. In the words of Keith M. Booker, dystopian literature is used to "provide fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable". Dystopias usually reference elements of contemporary society and are read by many as political warnings. 
We: influenced by the author’s experiences of mass labour, organised by logic, and exploring the loss of self for the benefit of the many
Brave New World: influenced by the industrial revolution and capitalism, exploring the loss of self in the fast-paced world of the future with a slave class drugged to enjoy their servitude
1984: a cautionary tale against totalitarianism and the use of propaganda to control a population
A Clockwork Orange: the reformation of youth by state authorities who fear youth violence and culture
Do Androids Dream: the emergence of A.I. and what it means to be human in a technology-heavy age

19. WHAT RELATIONSHIP DOES THE FUTURE HAVE WITH THE PRESENT?
HOW IS LITERATURE USED TO EXPLORE THIS?

20. FAHRENHEIT 451 CAN YOU APPLY THESE IDEAS TO FAHRENHEIT 451?
BRAINSTORM AS MANY LINKS AS YOU CAN.