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Listen and Apply the Listening Strategies

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Listen and Apply the Listening Strategies

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How to recognize a dystopia

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How to recognize a dystopia - Alex Gendler

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Progress definition, a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage: the progress of a student toward a degree. See more.

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Many of the books mentioned in the lesson are in the public domain and can be downloaded for free. For a more critical look, read about the political history of dystopia and its implications, or the role of nature in many dystopian scenarios. And if you're wondering how past visions of dystopia hold up today, you can track which dystopian predictions from various works have come true.

Interested in reading some dystopian novels? Take a look at this list and see if anything interests you: The Best Dystopian Novels Everyone Should Read. Why is dystopian literature so appealing to young adults? Take a look at this publication and learn more.

Want to learn more about the original dystopia? Two exquisitely preserved, high-quality editions of Thomas More's Utopia, (a 1518 Latin edition and 1556 London edition) can be found here.
Political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, near the end of his life, reflected on the horrors of the 20th century with a vision of what the 21st century will bring. Discussing the balance of often conflicting values that must be maintained in order to sustain a free society, he notes "we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals... The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood-eggs are broken, but the omelette is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelette, and just go on breaking eggs." The quote above is certainly a grim outlook on the state of the world, but Berlin does end on a more optimistic note - see here for more!
It seems that a note of optimism infuses some of the darkest moments: in his afterward to the 1961 edition of Orwells 1984, Erich Fromm wrote "The mood of hopelessness about the future of man is in marked contrast to one of the most fundamental features of Western thought: the faith in human progress and in man's capacity to crete a world of justice and peace."

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How to recognize a dystopia - Alex Gendler

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The genre of dystopia - the 'not good place'- has captured the imaginations of artists and audiences alike for centuries. But why do we bother with all this pessimism? Alex Gendler explains how dystopias act as cautionary tales- not about some particular government or technology, but the very idea that humanity can be molded into an ideal shape.

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In George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984, doublethink is the act of holding, simultaneously, two opposite, individually exclusive ideas or opinions and believi

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The word of the year is "post-truth," according to Oxford Dictionaries. Post-truth has been used a lot in 2016 to describe the successful Brexit and Donald Trump campaigns, both of which were based in a systematic misrepresentation of facts. The definition, according to Oxford, is "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." But post-truth could also be defined by a simple one-word synonym: propaganda.

"I think propaganda needs to return to common parlance," says Michael J. Socolow, a professor of journalism and communications at the University of Maine. "We have so many euphemisms today for propaganda. We have 'native advertising,' 'sponsored content,' 'public diplomacy,' 'fake news,' and 'post-truth' content: They'reall variations on propaganda, what they identified in the 1920s and 1930s."

The invention of new words and phrases to conceal old evils is itself an old evil. Politicians and pundits, as always, seek out new innocuous phrases in an effort to dampenthe revulsion of recognition. "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible," George Orwell famously wrote in 1946.

But the euphemism post-truth is perhaps especially, depressingly appropriate, because it is itself a sign of a time when snappy jargon is being used to obscure both the truth and the continuity between past and present. It's also a big linguistic step in the wrong direction. Now more than ever, Americans generally-and the media especially - need to stop trying to affix gleaming chrome on old corruption.

In its current form, the term post-truth was first used in 1992 in an essay in The Nation, as best as Oxford Dictionaries has been able to determine. But the majority of people, especially those who don't obsessively read the internet, probably don't know what post-truth is-and wouldn't necessarily agree with the term if they did. "The idea of post-truth is that it implies that truth is over," Socolow explains. "120 million Americans voted in this past election, and I'm not ready to say that a significant number of them believe, on either side, that we've moved past truth in that way."

It's also telling that one of the runners-up for Oxford Word of the Year was "alt-right." Defined by the dictionary as, "an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content," a simpler definition might just be " neo-Nazis." Like post-truth, the term alt-right presents itself as defining a new phenomenon: Here is a controversial, alternative-and, depending on who you ask, cool-conservative movement, born out of the internet age. And also like post-truth, the alt-right is really just a new phrase for an old totalitarian phenomenon.

No wonder then that these new words, in form and content, recall Orwell's old words-specifically some of the newspeak from 1984. "Crimethink," "thoughtcrime," and "unperson"-reading that list makes it seem like Orwell could have invented post-truth himself. They even sound the same, with their simple, thunk-thunk construction of single syllables mashed together. The sheer ugly clumsiness is supposed to make the language seem futuristic and cutting edge. The world to come will be utilitarian, slangy, and up-to-the-minute in its inelegance. So the future was in Orwell's day; so it is in 2016.

"I think the prefix "post' has special resonance in light of post-modernism, post-humanism, etc.," Nathan Atkinson, an assistant professor at Georgia State University, explains by email. "It implies an end and a transcendence all at once." The internet age is thrilled by, and obsessed with, the idea of rapid change-whether utopian or dystopian. Post-truth implies we've slipped into a bleak tomorrow, in which information is so ubiquitous and uncontrolled that truth has no meaning. Similarly post-racial-which became a prominent buzzword after president Barack Obama's election-implied that racism no longer exists.

Either way, there's an excitement in believing that society is rapidly progressing and that history no longer has a hold on us, for better or worse. But this is just another example of obfuscation-or post-truthiness, if you prefer. When Donald Trump lies about having prevented a Ford plant from moving to Mexico, he's not inventing a new relationship to the truth: He's simply spewing propaganda, the way Mussolini did when he claimed that he made the trains run on time.

Fascism thrives on falsehoods: The promise that this highly efficient new governing philosophy is ushering in a gleaming future, cleansed of the detritus of lesser peoples and weaker ideologies. Terms like post-truth and alt-right seem to provide a modern twist, though they come from the same fascist playbook as ever.

In the age of Trump, we need our rhetoric to be more clear and more ruthless than ever before. Instead of new words, we need language that reminds us that the present is built on the past, and that history continues to matter, analytically and ethically. The idea that we have moved past truth and past decency is simply a convenient political lie. Which is to say: It's propaganda.
Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated Nathan Atkinson's current university and position. You can follow Noah on Twitter at @nberlat. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Orwellian euphemisms like "post-truth" and "alt-right" are perfect for whitewashing fascism

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The word of the year is "post-truth," according to Oxford Dictionaries. Post-truth has been used a lot in 2016 to describe the successful Brexit and Donald Trump campaigns, both of which were based in a systematic misrepresentation of facts. The definition, according to Oxford, is "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential...

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Before his election as the junior senator from Minnesota by a narrow margin in 2008, Mr. Franken, 66, was a longtime writer and performer on " Saturday Night Live," beginning in its debut season. After leaving "S.N.L.," he became a nationally syndicated radio host and wrote a series of best-selling books of political satire.

In the Senate, Mr. Franken has stood up for liberal causes and, early in the Trump administration, proved himself an incisive examiner in confirmation hearings, particularly those of Betsy DeVos for education secretary and Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Mr. Franken's best-selling memoir, " Al Franken: Giant of the Senate," was published last month.

Over a late-afternoon meal at the end of May at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Midtown Manhattan (grilled salmon and mixed vegetables for both), Ms. Wilde and Mr. Franken discussed truth and lies - both in "1984" and in contemporary politics - as well as their first meeting, when Ms. Wilde was a child.

Philip Galanes What a pair: explorers of truth in 2017, no less.

Al Franken It's adorable to think I made a living by pointing out that people were lying. And people seemed to care about it back then. Now we have a president who calls the news media the enemy of America.

Olivia Wilde It's straight out of "1984."

PG But you write about liars with such brio. Why is that?

AF It's my basic belief in the way things ought to be.

PG But four books? Is there a Rosebud moment here?

AF No, no, no. My parents always told me to tell the truth. But everyone's parents told them that, right? Politics ought to be based on actual facts and objective truth. That's hard to find sometimes.

OW We've been raised to think, "Politics is dirty; politicians are liars." I think it's great that you've worked against that cliché by calling out lying as outrageous behavior - which it is. But now we've hit another level of outrageousness because there's no source that is universally trusted to fact-check. Some of that went out the window with internet journalism. People may not even question the source. If it's on CNN, a huge part of the country will say: "Fake news!" So, what's the end of that?

PG Isn't that what "1984" explores, the chaos and fatigue of nonstop propaganda?

OW Yes, and it's not pretty.

PG I first saw the play in London two years ago.

OW It was all about [Edward] Snowden then. Big Brother and the N.S.A.

PG But now, after the election of Trump, it's impossible not to connect Orwell's "two plus two equals five, if the State says so," with inaugural crowd sizes and suspect budget math. Did you get involved with the play before or after the election?

OW It came to me after the election. I needed a way to manifest my daily outrage. And I wanted to talk beyond my own choir. The great thing about Broadway is that it's seen by so many different types of people. And the great point of this play is that we have to get beyond "groupthink" and start thinking for ourselves. I don't plan to convert large groups to the left, not if they came in as Republicans. But I want everyone to leave the theater questioning what we've been told and knowing that's our job.

AF You can do "groupthink" without anyone lying. Everybody can be wrong on an issue - like Vietnam for a long time. That's a danger on Capitol Hill that's neither a right nor a left issue. You worry about yourself.

PG Is it unpleasant going into the Senate, knowing you're probably never going to agree with anyone who isn't in your caucus?

AF That's not the case. The problem is: Are they truly listening? Right now, we're going through this health care nightmare. The House passed a horrendous bill, and the Congressional Budget Office scored it: 23 million people lose their coverage. It's not a fact, but that's their score. And if the bill became law, it would end the protections of people with pre-existing conditions. We lose all the progress we gained.

PG Let's explore that. We have a president who campaigned on the promise of a new plan with better coverage than Obamacare. And House leaders are still claiming no loss of coverage in their plan. Is this classic "1984" double-think, the truth and a lie existing in people's minds simultaneously?

OW I don't think we know.

AF There are so many different lies to unpack here. During the campaign, Trump said he would not cut Medicaid, but this has about $1.5 trillion in cuts: more than $800 billion for this health care plan and over $600 billion in other savings. I go all around Minnesota, talking to people at rural hospitals and community round tables. People are literally crying about this. They say: "My mom gets her home health care through Medicaid, and she will lose it if this happens. My husband and I work. We don't know what we'll do with her."

PG I know you're not a mind reader, but ...

AF I'd be a liar if I said I was a mind reader.

PG So, are these guys lying, or have they somehow convinced themselves that raising my annual insurance premium to $2 million is not taking my insurance away?

AF I have to believe there are people who know they are lying.

PG Because it's one thing if they've convinced themselves that a lie is the truth. It's another if they just don't care about people having health insurance.

AF Sometimes, it ain't so cut and dry. But I had a colleague tell me that the easiest person to fool is yourself.

PG To be fair and balanced about this, there is a Democratic version of this problem, too. When President Obama said, "Don't worry, you can keep your doctor ..."

AF Yup. He shouldn't have said it.

PG Was he selling or lying or just really hoping it would be true.

AF I'm not sure why he kept saying that. First of all, no one can definitely keep their insurance because insurance companies make the decision whether to offer the same damn insurance. But it was embarrassing and bad that he said it. And it opens us up to the same charges we're heaping on everyone else.

PG But aren't we all "Lying Liars"? I am. When my dad killed himself, I told people he had a heart attack - for years.

OW That's understandable.

PG And when I'm fighting with people, I say I'm sorry long before I really am.

OW But that's for the greater good.

PG So, make the distinction between a lie you can live with and one you can't.

OW We all carry technology in our pockets. And we're somewhat aware that it's being made by people who aren't being paid enough in unsafe conditions. But we make allowances because we've decided that it's necessary. We're sort of lying to ourselves. There's a complexity in how we accept truth. The problem comes when we start creating our own truth to support potentially dangerous decisions, like the president is doing. But as regular people, we all lie to protect each other's feelings.

AF Why tell someone their butt looks big?

OW Is it going to help the situation?

AF My point is: Take that extra step to check yourself and your life. Taking the basic, important truths seriously is something that a healthy person does. I also think that as a kid, you learn that lying makes you sad. Remember breaking something in the kitchen and lying about it, that overwhelming guilt you felt?

PG I still do! So, what lies do you tolerate from your kids?

OW I'd be really impressed if my 7-month-old lied to me because she'd be talking.

AF You'd go, "Aren't you precocious?"

OW But I'll ask my son, "Did you brush your teeth?" He'll say, "Yeah." And I'll say: "You did not. I was standing right here." It's funny. Kids lie without any real strategy. That's why Trump seems so much like a toddler sometimes. His tendency to lie, when it's clearly a lie, is something small children do. They also bully and take toys from each other. It's something you're supposed to grow out of by the time you're 70.

AF Having some shame is a good thing.

PG Let's go back to your constituents who are terrified about Medicaid cuts.

AF And I'm talking about constituents who live in big Trump areas.

PG I understand. So, are they thinking: "Republicans lie to me; Democrats lie to me. Might as well blow the whole thing up"?

AF Some people take sides. You're on a team, and that's that. The first iteration of the G.O.P. health bill, which was better than the one that passed, had 17 percent support from the American people. That's the exact same number as Americans who said they've seen a ghost.

PG Go back to the Trump supporters. Is part of them saying --

AF "Oh, I'm angry." Yes.

PG How does that work? Why be mad at the politicians who are giving your mother the home health care she needs?

AF People are mad because in the last 40 years or so, life has become harder for the middle class. There's been a real squeeze. It isn't a birthright that your kids are going to be better off than you anymore, and people are mad about that. I don't want to place complete blame for this on anyone. But we progressives have a different theory than my conservative friends on this. We saw a lot of misunderstanding of race and immigration in this campaign. And to me, that means not understanding that we need immigrants.

OW That we are immigrants.

AF Except for some. We have 11 tribes in Minnesota.

OW Yes, everyone but them. But can you explain why some people seemingly don't act in their own self-interest on policies like health care and tax cuts?

PG Do we like voting against people we hate more than in our own interest?

AF We have to be very careful about saying that people are not voting in their self-interest. That's one of the things that some people who voted for Trump don't like about so-called elites: "I know what's better for you than you do."

OW That's an important point. But the question of elitism is so interesting when it comes to this administration. This is a president who ran on opulence and showing off his gilded Saddam Hussein-inspired apartment. My frustration doesn't come from needing to think that people were fooled by someone who doesn't have their best interests at heart. I just don't understand it.

AF Here's what my Republican colleagues would say: "The government is bloated, and it hasn't helped us. If you cut taxes, you reduce government spending." But if you cut taxes at the top, it doesn't trickle down. That's been our history. We've also seen what happens, like during the Clinton administration, when we raise taxes at the top. All the Republicans said, "This is going to cause a recession." But it didn't. We had growth.

PG It turns out that "1984" was prescient on many levels: the constant screens, the disinformation campaigns, the endless wars. But one area it didn't predict was how celebrity would become more important than ideology. Did you benefit from that?

AF Sure. Over the years, when I covered Republican conventions for Air America or Comedy Central, everyone would smile and go: "Hi, Al!"

OW Celebrity is something that can help you win elections, but you also had to work to counteract it.

PG Explaining risqué jokes that make sense for a comedian, but not for a senator.

AF It was a lot to overcome. But there were advantages, too. If I was going to a bean feed in Minnesota, people knew me from "S.N.L." or the radio show or from my books. So, they came to the bean feed.

PG And your celebrity has probably helped you get documentaries produced.

OW Absolutely. But I don't walk around thinking I'm a celebrity. I'm not picking up this fork as a celebrity. What I resent is when I express an opinion, some people will assume it can't be true, or it must be self-serving, because I'm a celebrity. But I'm genuinely interested in sharing information. I grew up in D.C. Both my parents are journalists [Leslie and Andrew Cockburn]; my grandparents were journalists. And I happen to have a larger platform because I'm a celebrity. It's something I struggle with.

AF Remember when I came to your house?

PG What? When was this?

AF How old were you, 15?

OW Yes, but I remember meeting you at a party when I was 12, and I was really excited because I wanted to talk about "S.N.L."

AF You weren't that excited at 15.

OW Well, 15-year-olds don't get excited about much.

AF I remember coming to your house, and you went up to your mom and said, "Can I leave now?" After you left the room, I said, "Now, is your daughter aware that she's beautiful?" Your mother nodded.

OW Oh, God!

AF Then I asked, "Does she have any idea what she wants to do?" Yes, she wants to be an actress. I thought, O.K., now it all makes sense. So, here are these two heavyweight journalists with a daughter who wants to be an actress. And they went with it. Didn't fight it, at all. Did you go to college?

OW I did not.

AF A lot of politicians say, "I was the first member of my family to go to college."

OW And I was the first member of mine not to. Luckily, my siblings made up for it. And the way my parents raised me had a really positive effect. Not to be impressed by anyone or anything shiny. They wouldn't let me take shortcuts. But they trained me to believe that, with hard work, anything is possible.

PG Sort of like that Franken kid from Minnesota.

AF From St. Louis Park.

PG Let me end with a question about how your new book is being received: "Al used to be funny; then he ran for senator and hid his funny under a bushel. Now he's funny again. So, he must be running for president in 2020." But when you did the deal for this book, Hillary was going to be our next president, right?

AF This will throw your theory overboard, but it was even earlier than that. After I was re-elected [in 2014], my wife and I were going to have a vacation, six days at a lodge in northern Minnesota. But she got sick and stayed in Washington, so I had six days alone in a cabin. I'd always threatened to write about how I got into politics. But once I started, I was really having fun.

PG So "Fun with Franken" in 2020?

AF No, no, no.

OW I'm glad you wrote it. Your book made me more optimistic about our future.

AF Good. Because I think we have reason to be.

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Al Franken and Olivia Wilde: Calling a Lie a Lie

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Before his election as the junior senator from Minnesota by a narrow margin in 2008, Mr. Franken, 66, was a longtime writer and performer on " Saturday Night Live," beginning in its debut season. After leaving "S.N.L.," he became a nationally syndicated radio host and wrote a series of best-selling books of political satire.

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"The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump's authoritarian appeal."-Salon It Can't Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.

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I was in high school in the mid '90s when I first read George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. It lifted the veil of my childhood innocence, opening my eyes to the injustices of the adult world. Once I finished the chilling, final sentence of the novel, there was no going back to my naive self.

New dystopian books are dominating the bestseller list. The Hunger Games trilogy has spent more than 260 consecutive weeks (more than five consecutive years to date) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has more than 65 million copies in print. And Publishers Weekly claims:

2013 was officially the year of Divergent. The three books in Veronica Roth's dystopian trilogy sold a combined 6.7 million copies last year (three million hardcovers, 1.7 million paperbacks, and just under two million e-books).

1984 helped me uncover dark truths about the adult world. It bred a rebellious streak in me, or so I thought. Looking back, I wasn't rebellious at all. I wasn't defying authority and upending injustices. I was just a teenager going about his school day in ripped jeans and flannel shirts. But dystopian lit made me believe that I was a rebel.

Today's stories resonate with teenagers in a similar way. On their journey to self-discovery, they're identifying with a new crop of young protagonists, often in post-apocalyptic worlds, crusading against oppression. That's because they too are beginning to question the authority of their parents, become skeptical of our political system, and challenge the traditional power structures like school and the law.

Dystopian novels belong in our classrooms because they hold a mirror up to our fears and flaws. They use amplification, irony, and paradox to reflect the shortcomings and injustices of the day.

For those of you that read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or Brave New World in high school, here are five updates to the dystopian genre that will captivate you and your students.

The Handmaid's Tale

Margret Atwood wrote this shortly after the conservative revival of the 1980s, just as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher assumed power. The novel opens with a staged terrorist attack that wipes out the president and most of Congress, allowing religious fanatics to seize power and strip women of their freedoms. In many ways, it imagines a reversal of the rights that women fought to achieve in the 1960s and '70s. Atwood has said that the book "has become a sort of tag for those writing about shifts towards policies aimed at controlling women, and especially women's bodies and reproductive functions."

In this coming-of-age story, Jonas is given the job of holding all of the memories of the community, good and bad. Through his training, he starts to question whether or not the numbness the leaders have chosen for the community is a good thing. Is it worth missing all of the joy to bypass the pain of life? In a 2005 speech to the University of Richmond, Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, said:

Because I write for a young audience, the questions that incite and inspire a book must always be presented through the consciousness of a young person. And so I created a boy, and I named him Jonas. Then I forced myself to look very, very closely at the world this boy lived in. It was like picking up a rock in a swamp and seeing the toxic filth underneath, the oozing, slimy, squirming things that hide out of the daylight. The things that we don't want to see. The things we would like to turn away from.

Corporate culture, technologically-controlled minds, and rampant consumerism are just a few of the targets on author M.T. Anderson's agenda. The story is about Titus, Violet, and the Feed -- an internet connection implanted in the brain. Those with feeds can access "vast digital knowledge databases, untold consumer goods, and can communicate with others quickly and silently." Yet, as Violet and Titus uncover, it's more a tool for thought control, advertisement, and manipulation rather than intellectual advancement. Anderson has said:

Even as a teenager, I was irate, and I think a lot of teens are mad about this, mad about the way that the whole media and the advertising world try to demand that kids be a certain kind of thing. And the fact that they take our own images of ourselves and they mold those images, but also kind of use them like a voodoo doll, like sticking pins in and sort of demanding -- the pain will stop once you buy this thing.

The Hunger Games

This series highlights the inequalities of a post-apocalyptic society, pointing out the meaninglessness of vanity and the cruelty of a severe caste system that punishes those who rebel. The voyeuristic thrill of reality television and our apathy toward war and violence are twin targets of author Suzanne Collins. She explained to Scholastic:

Telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times. So, in the case of the Hunger Games, issues like the vast discrepancy of wealth, the power of television and how it's used to influence our lives, the possibility that the government could use hunger as a weapon, and then first and foremost to me, the issue of war.

Veronica Roth wrote the story that became Divergent while on winter break at Northwestern University. Roth said the inspiration came from:

. . . Psych 101 my first year of college, and I learned about exposure therapy, which is when they treat people with fear, like for anxiety. It exposes them repeatedly to what they're afraid of, and gradually you become less afraid of it, or have a healthy level of fear, and I thought of the Dauntless then. That's kind of where it came from, and everything else built on top of it.

Everything else includes a post-apocalyptic Chicago that divides society into personality types called factions to promote stability and balance. Yet as a beautiful female protagonist struggles to find to find her place and her true faction, she is exposed to the limitations of these social divisions, how they indoctrinate members, and how it all contributes to the manipulation of the masses.

Does this new wave of dystopian literature stack up with the classics like Brave New World, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

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A Hunger for Dystopia: Critical Thinking on the Journey to Self-Discovery

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I was in high school in the mid '90s when I first read George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. It lifted the veil of my childhood innocence, opening my eyes to the injustices of the adult world. Once I finished the chilling, final sentence of the novel, there was no going back to my naive self.

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Jon Hamm and Jake Gyllenhaal Perform a Scene From the 1935 Book That Predicted Donald Trump: "It Can't Happen Here"

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Jon Hamm and Jake Gyllenhaal perform scene, "It Can't Happen Here."

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Ten days into the Trump administration, the word "authoritarian" is popping up all over the media.

It is seeping into newspaper columns, TV segments and political discourse. Critics on both the left and the right are warning about President Trump's behavior, saying it signals creeping authoritarianism.

Some of them are wondering if the new president has autocratic tendencies; others are alleging it outright and saying that he is eroding American democratic norms.

The cover story in March's edition of The Atlantic, a magazine well-read in Washington, is titled "HOW TO BUILD AN AUTOCRACY." Conservative Trump critic David Frum is the author.

The magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said he was publishing the article a week early, on Monday night. "Given the precipitous quality of this past weekend's executive order, I thought that David's piece ought to be read sooner, rather than later," he told CNN.

Some of the concerns stem from the Trump administration's constant media bashing. On Sunday Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway asked, not for the first time, why journalists and commentators who underestimated Trump haven't been fired. And the president went out of his way to call the media the "opposition party" in a tweet on Monday.

"Those of us who've studied authoritarian regimes know that the first step is you want to intimidate people who'd be saying things that the leader doesn't want to hear," CNN presidential historian and former Nixon library director Tim Naftali said on "CNN Tonight" last week.

Trump supporters may dismiss all of this as anti-Trump panic. But the discussions are not just happening in the usual circles.

"Anecdotally, I'd say that journalists are starting to recognize the authoritarian tendencies of this administration and to be more explicit about the risk of democratic erosion in their coverage," Dartmouth political science professor Brendan Nyhan, who has been frequently sounding an alarm about authoritarianism recently, told CNN.

"One key factor," Nyhan said, "seems to be the growing number of conservatives and former Bush officials who are speaking out, which helps make clear that these concerns aren't just partisan or ideological opposition to Trump."

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen jump-started the conversation in November, right after election day, by writing an essay, " Autocracy: Rules for Survival," for the New York Review of Books.

Last week on MSNBC, she said "just fact-checking everything" Trump says "doesn't quite go far enough. I think we have to understand the power play. We have to understand the aesthetics of using language so that it turns into mush. We have to keep writing in the bigger story and keep trying to understand the truth."

Last week Evan McMullin, who ran for president as a conservative alternative to Trump, said the anti-media attacks are "what authoritarians or leaders with authoritarian tendencies do. It's from the playbook that they use."

Over the weekend libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch, without citing Trump by name, said at a conference that the United States could "go the authoritarian route ... or we can move toward a free and open society."

In a widely-shared column, Bush administration official and longtime Trump critic Eliot Cohen wrote that Trump's behavior "will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him." He predicted that it would "probably end in calamity."

Other observers who see authoritarian tendencies, like author and CNN host Fareed Zakaria, are hopeful that Trump's impulses will be tempered by institutions like the courts.

Much of the current commentary is centered around getting Americans to recognize the risks. "We have a president who seems to be an authoritarian," progressive CNN commentator and former Obama administration aide Van Jones said at the Women's March on January 21.

Before inauguration day, NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote an op-ed for CNN.com called "Trump is following the authoritarian playbook."

And the late-night comedian Seth Meyers, who regularly uses his NBC program to lambaste Trump, said "Trump's hostility toward the press is the kind of thing you usually see in authoritarian regime."

This was a topic on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," the program I host on CNN.

"Whenever I look what President Trump and his team are doing here in the U.S., I'm like, 'Wait a second. I have seen this movie before.' It's all familiar to us," Turkish journalist Mahir Zeynalov said on the program. "And I'm not talking about a country like Iran or China, where autocrats are crushing or strangulating the media. I'm talking about Turkey, a country that was somehow democratic a decade ago, with a somewhat independent media, and now turning into a state where there's at least one journalist being put behind bars since last summer, on average, every day."

Zeynalov acknowledged that the U.S. has "strong institutional mechanisms," but said that backsliding is still possible.

"If there's anyone who is saying that this cannot happen here in the United States, they are significantly underestimating how leaders, including in democratic countries, can undermine media freedom, and, with that, democracy," he said.

Google search data for the term "authoritarian" shows increases in queries in 2016 and 2017 versus prior years.

Amazon's list of best selling books also suggests an increase in interest in the subject matter. The Sinclair Lewis novel "It Can't Happen Here," about a gradual fascist takeover of the U.S., joined George Orwell's "1984" on Amazon's best seller list over the weekend.

CNNMoney (New York) First published January 30, 2017: 7:43 PM ET

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Is Trump's behavior authoritarian? Columnists are asking the question

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It is seeping into newspaper columns, TV segments and political discourse. Critics on both the left and the right are warning about President Trump's behavior, saying it signals creeping authoritarianism.

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Lewis's second wife, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, provided much of the inspiration for "It Can't Happen Here." In 1931, she interviewed Hitler, scoffing at his "startling insignificance" when encountered face-to-face. Back in the United States, Thompson interviewed Huey Long, who had vowed to challenge Franklin Roosevelt for the presidency in 1936. She noted that Long's populist message and swaggering style reminded her of Hitler, and according to Lewis's biographer, Richard Lingeman, Lewis took the message to heart. A recent Nobel Prize winner, known for his superhuman productivity, Lewis churned out the entire manuscript of "It Can't Happen Here" between May and August of 1935. The novel arrived in bookstores that October.

By that point, some of the immediate threat had passed. (On Sept. 8, 1935, Long was assassinated at the Louisiana State Capitol, one of the great political traumas of the 1930s.) Lewis's book nonetheless sold 320,000 copies, becoming his most popular work to date. Reviewers agreed that the book's success had little to do with its literary merits; though "a vigorous anti-fascist tract," one critic noted, it was "not much of a novel." What propelled its popularity was a sense of urgency, the worry that the United States - like the nations of Western Europe - might contain dark forces yet to be unleashed.

A slightly different sense of urgency seems to be fueling the book's latest surge in popularity. We have already experienced some of what Lewis describes in the first third of the book: a blustery populist candidate rising, against all odds, to the presidency of the United States. Now the great question is whether or not we are moving into Lewis's terrifying future.

The novel's Everyman candidate, Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip, is hardly a perfect stand-in for Trump. A creature of the Great Depression and a Democrat, Windrip sweeps into office as a quasi-socialist, promising $3,000 to $5,000 for every "real American family." His movement style evokes the hyper-militarization of Nazi Germany rather than the anonymous jabs of the Twitter mob.

Still, there are enough points of resonance to cause palpitations in the heart of any anxious 21st-century liberal. Like Trump, Windrip sells himself as the champion of "Forgotten Men," determined to bring dignity and prosperity back to America's white working class. Windrip loves big, passionate rallies and rails against the "lies" of the mainstream press. His supporters embrace this message, lashing out against the "highbrow intellectuality" of editors and professors and policy elites. With Windrip's encouragement, they also take out their frustrations on blacks and Jews.

The architect of Windrip's campaign is a savvy newsman named Lee Sarason, the novel's closest approximation of Steve Bannon. It is Sarason, not Windrip, who actually writes "Zero Hour," the candidate's popular jeremiad on national decline. Sarason believes in propaganda, not information, openly arguing that "it is not fair to ordinary folks - it just confuses them - to try to make them swallow all the true facts that would be suitable to a higher class of people."

This is where the novel comes to rest by Inauguration Day: Through a combination of deception and charisma, the feared Windrip ascends to the presidency while the nation's liberals tremble. It is only after the inauguration, though, that "It Can't Happen Here" takes a truly dark turn. Upon moving into the White House, Windrip immediately declares Congress an "advisory" body, stripped of all real power. When members of Congress resist, he locks them up without the slightest semblance of due process, the beginning of the end for American democracy.

The rest of the book describes one long, disorienting nightmare, a national descent into labor camps and torture chambers and martial law. The novel gains its energy from Jessup's internal struggle, his regret at having done so little to stop it all while he still could. "The tyranny of this dictatorship isn't primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work," he realizes. "It's the fault of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups, who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest." With this heavy hand, Lewis seeks not only to satirize American liberals, but to induce them to pay attention before it's too late.

While the book skewers Jessup's passivity, however, it does little to suggest viable modes of engagement under the Windrip regime, short of abandoning home and family and fleeing to Canada. Every time Jessup attempts some modest act of resistance, he is met with the ruthless repression of the state. When Jessup prints a righteous editorial, Windrip's goons arrest him and murder his son-in-law. Jessup ends up as a toilet-scrubber in a concentration camp, beaten down but determined to carry on. Six months into his sentence, he escapes and joins the underground movement percolating in Canada - where, the book implies, he should have gone in the first place.

The one bright spot for the anti-Windrip forces is that things don't work out particularly well for anyone else. Windrip never follows through on his pledge to restore prosperity and redistribute wealth, fueling conflict with his early supporters, who mostly end up dead or in jail. Even Windrip himself gets little of what he wants. As president, he insists on absolute obedience, "louder, more convincing Yeses from everybody about him." After two years of this treatment, his crafty aide Sarason maneuvers the president into exile, only to be deposed himself a month later in a military coup.

By the book's closing pages, Jessup has returned to the United States as a disciplined resistance fighter, organizing armed rebellions throughout the Midwest. His transformation illustrates Lewis's most powerful message: When it happens here, everyone should be prepared to resist. But Jessup's story also underscores how difficult it can be to sort out what to do at moments of swift political change and social confusion. In our brave imaginations, we undoubtedly do the right thing when fascism comes to America. In reality, we might not recognize it while it's happening.

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Reading the Classic Novel That Predicted Trump

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Lewis's second wife, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, provided much of the inspiration for "It Can't Happen Here." In 1931, she interviewed Hitler, scoffing at his "startling insignificance" when encountered face-to-face. Back in the United States, Thompson interviewed Huey Long, who had vowed to challenge Franklin Roosevelt for the presidency in 1936.

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Three '1984' quotes that are eerily relevant in 2017 and explain Trump's rise

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The Post's book critic Ron Charles reads quotes from George Orwell's "1984," which is spiking in sales and suddenly feels more relevant than ever.

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Welcome to dystopia – George Orwell experts on Donald Trump | The panel

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Since Kellyanne Conway spoke of ‘alternative facts’, Nineteen Eighty-Four has hit the No 1 spot in Amazon’s book sales chart. So, is the age of Newspeak here?

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In the book 1984, the job of protagonist Winston Smith is to replace historical truths with new, state-approved "facts." This week in the US, in what appears to be an eerie reflection of today's political climate of "post-truth" and "alternative facts," the dystopian novel has shot to the number-one place among bestselling books on US Amazon.

In the last 15 hours, at time of writing, George Orwell's classic has moved from number 6 to number 1 on Amazon's overall bestselling books list. The Guardian noted its placement at number 6 yesterday. The shift comes just days after White House press secretary Sean Spicer told assembled reporters a blatant lie about the size of crowds at Donald Trump's inauguration, and after Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway defended the untruth as "alternative facts."

Of course we can't be sure that the Trump administration's recent blunders are driving sales of the novel; 1984 is also taught in schools across the US, and there are other perennial classics on Amazon's 100 bestsellers list, like The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. A spokesman from Signet, a Penguin Random House imprint, however, says that on Jan. 25 the publisher ordered an extra 100,000 copies based on demand. That's on top of its recent reprint order of 75,000 copies, which is already larger than usual.

Still, for the 60-year-old book, beating out The 5 Love Languages, Hillbilly Elegy, and Marie Kondo for the top-selling spot without a sequel release is worth noting.

The year for which 1984 is named is synonymous with a totalitarian society, in which the government enjoys constant surveillance over its people and freely manipulates both history and language. Here are a few concepts and passages that might be resonating with American readers today:

On "crimestop"

Spicer's Jan. 21 falsehood and Conway's description of it as an "alternative fact" push the public to doubt whether certain facts-like crowd size, or numbers of subway riders-are knowable at all. But as others have pointed out, when people hear conflicting stories from authoritative sources (from the White House and the mainstream media, in this case), it creates confusion and eventually mental laziness, pushing people to accept that some things simply cannot be verified. As Conway said dismissively, "There's no way to quantify crowds, we all know that."

In 1984, Orwell coined the term "crimestop" for this tactic of confusion. "Crimestop," he wrote, was the deliberate erosion of the public's skepticism, such that they learn not to ask hard questions. His more famous, complementary concept "doublethink" described the ability to believe in two conflicting facts at the same time.

The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity.

On "reality control"

This morning, Trump tweeted that his team would launch a full investigation into voter fraud, referring to his previous unsourced claim that "millions" voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election. Even without evidence, such statements on repeat can create an "alternative" reality for citizens who haven't read the stories that debunk his claim.

Orwell also has a term for this strategy: "Reality control" consists of the slow erasure of history and its replacement by government-approved stories in the minds of the people governed. Coloring the historical narrative happens in every nation and community, but seems particularly abrupt on display in the new US president's bombastic tweets.

Says Winston to himself:

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-if all records told the same tale-then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'

On science

On Jan. 24, Trump released a gag order to the US Environmental Protection Agency, to keep it from communicating to the public about publicly funded science research. In the world of 1984, a government agency that conducts and disseminates science research surely would be a nonissue, because the very idea of empirical knowledge would be antithetical to the government's larger operation (see "reality control" and "crimestop"):

In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science'. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty.

This post has been updated with information from Signet, and corrected to reflect that the date of Donald Trump's EPA gag order was Jan. 24, not Nov. 24.

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Key concepts from George Orwell's "1984" might explain why it's Amazon's best-selling book in the age of Trump

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In the book 1984, the job of protagonist Winston Smith is to replace historical truths with new, state-approved "facts." This week in the US, in what appears to be an eerie reflection of today's political climate of "post-truth" and "alternative facts," the dystopian novel has shot to the number-one place among bestselling books on US Amazon.

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Intro to Fahrenheit 451

By 1953, World War II had been over for a few years, and the world was sort of returning to normalcy. For famed author Ray Bradbury, this offered more questions than it did answers and led him to create perhaps his most famous work: his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451.

The world Bradbury creates in Fahrenheit 451 is an authoritarian, dystopian one. An authoritarian society is where individuality is discouraged, even punished, and complete obedience is heartily encouraged. A dystopian society is a fictional, futuristic, otherworldly society that paints a picture of an awful reality nobody would want to live in. The dystopian world painted by Bradbury for his novel is a society in which citizens are literally surrounded by television in their homes, by walls that are actually televisions. The country is in a state of war, and free thought is discouraged. Bradbury drew on the changing times he lived in as inspiration and stated that, in his opinion, the novel is more of a response to the growing popularity of television than anything. He feared TV would knock literature to the wayside, and that idea shows in what really makes the world of Fahrenheit 451 chilling. Here, books are illegal, and firemen, instead of putting out actual fires, perform state-mandated book burnings.

Why Ban (or Burn) Books?

To backtrack for just a second, censorship is a really important term, especially when we're talking about Fahrenheit 451. Censorship is the act of suppressing something, and, since we're talking about a form of art here, censorship in this case means specifically the act of suppressing something the censor finds objectionable or offensive, usually on moral, religious or political grounds. Ray Bradbury firmly stated that Fahrenheit 451 grew out of his fear of television's growing influence on people and society as a whole. And that theme is clearly present. However, due to the laws banning books present in the novel, it's pretty obvious that censorship is also a key theme, and it deserves to be studied.

So the idea of banning books, or removing a certain book from libraries, school curriculums or other places/lists, grows out of an inflated idea of censorship. More often than not, books are banned because one or two people, or maybe a group of people, fear what the book has to say. A good example of real-life book banning run amok is a book about witchcraft banned in old times, when such things weren't understood. Or in Nazi Germany, works by Jewish authors were publicly burned. That's fear; being so afraid of different ideas that you want to not only ban those ideas, but you want to obliterate them with actual flames. This shows how much impact the written word can have. It brings forth new ideas (or maybe old ideas that have gone out of favor with whatever government is in power). It questions the status quo. It voices concerns.

Why Ban Fahrenheit 451?

The human race has a talent for trying to destroy things we're afraid of, or things we don't understand, and when it comes to books, this can be accomplished by either banning said book or burning it. This is actually ironic when we talk about the banning of Fahrenheit 451. Irony is a term you've probably heard before in regard to something funny or comedic. There are different types of irony, but in this situation it means that the result (banning a book about books being banned) is pretty much the exact opposite of what one would expect the result to be. With this novel, Ray Bradbury drew attention to the problem of ignorance and censorship in society by writing about a world where books are burned because of a requirement by the government, only to have his own work banned.

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why is fahrenheit 451 banned? - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Why Is Fahrenheit 451 Banned? - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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By 1953, World War II had been over for a few years, and the world was sort of returning to normalcy. For famed author Ray Bradbury, this offered more questions than it did answers and led him to create perhaps his most famous work: his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 .

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What "Orwellian" really means - Noah Tavlin

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Watch this video, take notes and build your arguments  (click on "view original")

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Watch this video, take notes and build your arguments  (click on "view original")

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At Arizona State University, science fiction writers and scientists have joined together to fight back against dystopian dramas.

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Christmas 2014 is over. Now it's back to reality for another 364 days.

To start you off, I'd like to examine how our society, most of the year at least, has become obsessed with something less-than-cheery: the notion of dystopia.

From the film adaptations of "The Giver" and "Divergent" to the bestselling "The Hunger Games" series, the craze over this genre has been in full force for the last few years. And actually, we've been fixated on the concept for decades in our pop culture, if for no other reason than that it makes for good cinema (what's more dramatic than showing our world shattered and/or recreated before our eyes?) It also plays on time-honored fears: The unknown of the future, and the possibility of adapting to extreme change.

Ultimately, it's a lot more palatable to live vicariously through these characters than to consider our own potential fate.

And that's precisely the problem, according to Naomi Klein. In a recent interview podcast with Wired, the Canadian author and social activist asserted that if humanity believes the future is indeed that bleak - that the only outcome is total disaster - then we may not bother to rise to the very real challenges that we face. The signs of climate change are all here, she says. We're just not paying enough attention to them.

If humanity believes that the future is indeed that bleak - that the only outcome is total disaster - then we may not bother to rise to the very real challenges that we face.

Grim realities

According to one recent (and eye-opening) report, scientists outlined how the effects of human-induced climate change - from torrential rains and more frequent heat waves to increasingly severe wildfires - are already obvious across the entire country. According to The New York Times, research showed that these drastic consequences have been caused by a minor temperature increase: Just 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. By the end of this century, scientists said warming could exceed 10 degrees if carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases aren't controlled.

"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the scientists declared in the report.

Other research has demonstrated just how climate change may impact our everyday lives. For instance, a recent MIT study showed that air pollution could curb food supplies. At best, the rates of malnourishment will only increase 9 to 13 percent by 2050 - but those rates will spike to 18 to 27 percent in the same time frame under a more pessimistic air quality scenario.

In other words, the framework for our favorite genre of blockbusters and novels isn't that far off. The difference between the storyline of our reality and the fantasy is - we still have time to fix it. However, Klein emphasized that the wave of dystopian fiction, in both film and book form, may actually be a worrying sign that we believe doom is the only possible outcome. And with so many arguments clouding the climate debate, Klein is concerned that we'll never realize the severity of the circumstances.

The difference between the storyline of our reality and the fantasy is - we still have time to fix it.

"I think what these films tell us is that we're taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted," she said in the podcast. "And that's the hardest part of my work, actually convincing people that we're capable of something other than this brutal response to disaster."

That concept is the crux of her new book, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. Climate." In it, she breaks down different options and propositions for how we can avert catastrophe, including cap-and-trade and geo-engineering.

"It seems easier, more realistic, to dim the sun than to put up solar panels on every home in the United States," she added. "And that says a lot about us, and what we think is possible, and what we think is realistic."

The power to prevent doom

Klein isn't the only one that's worried about our collective feeling of hopelessness. In a 2013 interview with Wired, London-based architect and critic Liam Young stressed the importance of recognizing that we don't passively receive our future - we have the power to shape it.

"The future is a verb, not a noun," he said. "And science fiction is an extraordinary storytelling medium that can help the audience realize that we are active agents in shaping our own futures rather than the victims of the default dystopias that often seem to be the modus operandi of future thinking."

Klein's hope is that today's youth will recognize the dystopian world as a very real possibility - but not one that is inevitably disastrous. And in an interview with TIME, "Divergent" actor Theo James admitted that the very reason why this genre is so popular with younger generations is that it's hyper-relevant.

"It's becoming part of the consciousness," he said. "You grow up in a world where it's part of the conversation all the time - the statistics of our planet warming up. The environment is changing. The weather is different. There are things that are very visceral and very obvious, and they make you question the future and how we will survive ... I certainly do. I wonder what kind of world my children's kids will live in."

There's a reason why we are so wrapped up in the dystopian wave: We already know what happened in the past. Now, everyone is wondering what will happen in the future.

There's no doubt that to hinder the catastrophic effects of climate change would take immediate and dramatic measures. But the first step to solving a problem is realizing that it exists. Research by the book reviews website GoodReads showed that fear of communism and fascism in the 1930s-1960s fueled both George Orwell's "1984" and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Could that mean that society's obsession with dystopian literature simply proves our recognition that real danger is near?
Image of post-apocalyptic landscape via Shutterstock.

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The Divergent Effect: Dystopia Genre Reflects Climate Change Fears

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Christmas 2014 is over. Now it's back to reality for another 364 days. To start you off, I'd like to examine how our society, most of the year at least, has become obsessed with something less-than-cheery: the notion of dystopia.

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All of these documents are linked to the subject we have seen in class.  Your final task is to create a video talk show with different specialists.  You will answer the issue at hand :«How have writers of Dystopias  interpreted progress throughout history ?  Can their popularity in today's society have a positive or negative impact on the world ? How are some innovators using Utopias to shape the future?». 

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All of these documents are linked to the subject we have seen in class.  Your final task is to create a video talk show with different specialists.  You will answer the issue at hand :«How have writers of Dystopias  interpreted progress throughout history ?  Can their popularity in today's society have a positive or negative impact on the world ? How are some innovators using Utopias to shape the future?». 

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1: The host  (will introduce the subject, ask questions, mediate the discussion and conclude the podcast)
2 : Someone specializing in classic Dystopian Fiction (you will talk about ideas that were identified in novels in the past, how are they connected to the past and present?  Are we living in a Dystopian world now?)
3: A pop culture oficiando, specializing in Young Adult Dystopian Literature (you will talk about the popularity of Dystopian Literature and how it can be helpful to society)
4: A scientist who works for the Project Hieroglyph ( You are interested in changing the future through Science Fiction (not in a Dystopian way) by collaborating with engineers and writers to come up with feasible concepts )

The recording should not be more than 5 minutes.

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Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the height of McCarthyism. Today, with the increasing proliferation of surveillance equipment in American cities, the spread of digital books and the decline of attention spans, Fahrenheit 451 remains a startlingly relevant work of fiction today.

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Childhood's End (Syfy) Official Trailer [HD]

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Written by Arthur C. Clarke and hailed as a revolutionary work of science fiction since its publishing in 1953, Childhood's End follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious "Overlords," whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.

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How dystopia hammers home the reality of climate change

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It's so easy not to really listen when the media (and science teachers) go on about climate change - but the cause of most dystopian societies in books, from The Hunger Games to Divergent, is invariably huge environmental disaster.

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Dystopian fiction has grown as a genre and continues to evolve today. One of the first dystopian novels to become famous was George Orwell's 1984, which is still one of the top-selling dystopian novels today. Recently, there has been a rising popularity of dystopian novels. These novels have been transformed into popular movies that have made millions of dollars. There is a uniqueness to these novels that made them immensely intriguing to people and famous in today's society.

The concept of dystopian literature is to not only entertain readers, but to let them understand the ideas and characteristics of a dystopian society. These characteristics are shown through our own society but at a more drastic level. The reader gains more knowledge by finding ways in which the topics the author writes about is relevant to today's society. This style of writing is so popular because it makes readers think of interesting topics that seem realistic, yet fictional. The rising popularity of dystopian literature among adolescent audiences is prominent in today's pop culture due to its relevance in young adult's lives, its direct comparisons to current events in today's world, and its originality in relation to other genres.

The relativity of dystopian literature to young adult's lives is a component to why the genre is so popular. The reasoning behind this is how the stories are written. Young adult dystopian literature today is mostly in an adolescent's perspective. For example, The Giver by Lois Lowry published in 1993 was one of the first dystopian novels written in a teenager's perspective. Most of all dystopian novels are now written in this style, such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. No one knows why there was such a gap between the dystopian novels from Lois Lowry's The Giver to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Lowry is honored to think that she was one who started this fad, but she now says, "Dystopian fiction is passé now." ( Lowry). Dystopian literature dates back much further than 1993 with George Orwell's 1984 being written in 1949.

One component to the relativity of young adult dystopian literature is that they are written in a teenager's perspective, which is unusual for traditional literature. Young adults, with the drama and the hormones, are trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be in life. With dystopian novels, the character is perceived as someone with independence and ambition. For example, "So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts" ( Collins 6). This explains Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and how she understands herself as an individual. This gives reassurance to the reader who is at similar age to the protagonist of the story. They admire how the author shows the protagonists insecurities and concerns such as their love interests and body image. The readers, especially in young adult dystopian literature, can take themselves to an alternate universe in which the character lives and feel like they are in the story. This concept makes it easy for them to relate to the protagonist.

Societies within young adult novels and how they are structured connect to the universal high school experience. The Hunger Games is about the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, who fights to the death against other adolescents in an arena due to the government creating life or death game situations in order to control society and its actions. The Hunger Games can be compared to high school as a "...cutthroat race for high-school popularity becomes an annual televised fight" ( Stevens). Readers may see high school as a dystopian society because of the political stigmas that could possibly exist. There are social classes, upper class being the popular kids and lower class being everyone else. The "popular kids" run the school and mandate the status quo. This assumption is made for the stereotypical high school student. young adult dystopian novels can give young readers different types of advice whether it is love, conflicts with the school, or other classmates.

Divergent written by Veronica Roth is another dystopian novel that can be compared to a high school environment. Divergent is about a teenager protagonist, Beatrice Prior, who faces the faction Erudite to prevent them from overtaking the government. She is Divergent, a person who has the characteristics of each faction. This is perceived by other citizens as dangerous because it is rare and is considered a threat to society. In the young adult novel, there are groups of people called factions. There is Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Erudite (the intelligent), Amity (the peaceful), and Candor (the honest). These factions can be compared to cliques within a high school like the jocks and nerds.

For example, "Beatrice Prior... is a lifelong Abnegation who chooses at the last minute to become a Dauntless-basically, an Amish girl gone Goth" ( Stevens). This idea sends a negative message until readers meet the main protagonist, Beatrice Prior. Beatrice is born with a gift that makes her fall under none of the categories of these factions. She represents all the factions because she shares each of their characteristics. The government disapproves of this society of people because they do not fit neatly into a certain faction and could convolute the entire social system. She teaches the reader that it is okay to be different from everyone else because it brings out the beauty in people when you understand who they really are. There is a moral to the story in many of the young adult novels. In Divergent the underlying moral is to be oneself and show that it's acceptable to be different from those who feel they must hide who they truly are.

Young adult dystopian novels are known for their metaphors such as comparing the issues within the book to the current affairs in our world. Dystopian themes touch many controversial issues we face today, from school shootings to Middle Eastern women challenging cultural gender norms. The most covered subject in this genre is the government and its corrupted ways. In young adult dystopias, the problems are more recognizable and easily solves by the reader compared to real world issues. For example, "...it introduces...the problems of today's society and allows them to escape to a world where good and evil are more black and white than our own" ( Khood). Though a majority of the young adult population knows almost nothing about current events, these dystopian novels put them in a frame of mind conducive to thinking critically about current events. Dystopian novel authors make this concept intriguing by adding love interests and drama. Teenagers are not interested in what goes on in today's world because much history needs to be factored into each problem in order to understand the predicament. With dystopian novels, the problem is clear and needs almost no information to be explained.

The idea of rebelling against the government to teenagers is quite outrageous until they see how it is done in dystopian literature. Though this genre is fiction, the situation seems realistic because the problems within the novels can be compared to problems within our own country or world. These ideas give hope to young adults to think that they can speak up for what they believe in whether it is in school or about the government. For example, "... they reflect the economic unrest in America today and allow teenagers to believe that they can make a difference." ( Khood) These brave characters in these novels are admired by millions of adolescents and they want to be like them with their heroic courage. This mind-set gives them confidence that their voice matter no matter what the topic is over.

Young adults now do not comprehend the idea of government and how powerful it can be especially in America because of our democratic government. We are not enlightened in how cruel governments and militaries are around the world. By reading these kinds of novels, we get a main idea of how insane some societies and governments can be. Parents might have a problem with this concept because they do not want their children to be exposed to these extreme ideas. Teenagers like how dystopian novels are honest with their readers and they treat them like adults with the ideas they display. An example of this is, "...politicians, military people and corporate moguls are capable of doing awful things - meaning dystopian novels feel kind of honest" ( Astor). The bluntness given from these authors is attractive to the reader because teenagers do not enjoy things that are sugar-coated. They want honesty and to be treated like adults so they enjoy reading this sort of writing style.

With everything that is happening in young adult's lives, young adult dystopian novels are an escape from reality. Teenagers are forever known for their "best and worst" years of their lives. From high school parties to girls' first love heartbreak, teenager's lives are like a rollercoaster. These novels parallel to teenager's moods in how they escalate situations in an instant, and then a completely different mood is set up while reading. Young adult dystopian novels are known for their intense plot twists. These twists make these novels intensely popular because it causes adolescents to engage themselves into the book. The characters are so well liked and "we're fascinated by the terrible things these characters face, and by how some react bravely and some react cowardly or with resignation" ( Astor). Dystopian novels are much more than just books; they are problem-solving situations. All these combined intriguing components have greatly escalated the allure and popularity of this genre.

One of the most interesting parts of the most popular dystopian novels is that the protagonist is a female. Though the main character is a female, she has a powerful male presence in the story and takes on stereotypical male obstacles. This is because the authors of these books want to make the character relatable to both genders or want to make strong female characters as a challenge to society's gender norms. An example of this is, "...readers can experience a level of freedom from oppression and freedom to play with gender not possible in the real world." ( Smith). This is a good way for male adolescents to see a female's perception in a male fitted situation. With these roles, a male or female could play both roles and there would be no need in changing any part of the book.

This makes it attractive for both genders to read rather than a specific one. Young adult dystopian novels "...encourage different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, departing from what is normal and teaching acceptance of varying forms of identity and self-expression" ( Smith). The idea of a female playing a non-feminine role has instantly attracted a huge audience and made this genre extremely popular among all ages.

Some of these dystopian novels have such an influence on women's lives because it introduces to them the idea of females playing a non-feminine role. The female roles in these novels are masculine to some degree, but they also have feminine characteristics. All of these concepts are so popular because it causes such controversy. This includes males and females who are on the fence about these ideas that this controversy caters to. The authors create a good balance of making sure the character is not too masculine or feminine so that the protagonist can be relatable. For example, "Her comfort with her masculinity is assumed, and her transgression of traditional femininity is in fact not transgressive at all." ( Smith) The protagonist is pleased with who she is and this is symbolic to independent women. They learn to be their own individual and do not depend on other people for happiness or survival.

Given all of these examples of the rising popularity of dystopian literature, there are many purposes to this original genre. One purpose being that it is more relatable to the audience. This genre of books has an emotional effect on people and how they feel about the world and on different issues they face. The basic focus of dystopian literature is to make readers think about how these dystopian societies relate to the real world.

In the end, the dystopian genre has been alive and thriving for many years. Teenagers' love for dystopian novels have created a whole new business for movies, merchandise, and more. No one can predict whether this genre will continue its popularity but it will allow our present generation more open-minded due to the ideas these novels share on government, military, society, and culture. The real question is will young adult dystopian literature continue it's popularity or slowly disintegrate and begin another fad in literature?

Works Cited

Astor, Dave. Why Do We Like Dystopian Novels? Article Byline Information . 19 October 2012. 25 October 2014 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-astor/why-do-we-like-dystopian-novels_b_1979301.html>.

Collins, Suzanne. "Chapter One." Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008.

Khood. The Hunger Games and Importance of Dystopian Literature . 28 April 2012. 25 October 2014 .

Lowry, Lois. The Giver Author Lois Lowry Says Dystopian Fiction Is Passé Janey Tracey. 13 August 2014.

Smith, Hannah. "Permission to Diverge: Gender in Young Adult Dystopian Literature." University of Puget Sound Sound Ideas (2014).

Stevens, Dana. "Why Teens Love Dystopias ." Slate (2014).

What do you think? .

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The Rising Popularity of Dystopian Literature

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Dystopian fiction has grown as a genre and continues to evolve today. One of the first dystopian novels to become famous was George Orwell's 1984, which is still one of the top-selling dystopian novels today. Recently, there has been a rising popularity of dystopian novels.

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War. Death. Despair. Oppression. Environmental ruin. Yup, when it comes to demoralizing literature, dystopian novels have it all! Yet many of us love this genre, and there are good reasons we do.

For one thing, we're reading about rather than actually living through the bad stuff happening in the near or far future (though that bad stuff is often an extrapolation of our troubled current world). We're not "in the arena" like the beleaguered tributes of The Hunger Games, the dystopian trilogy I recently finished.

And, while dystopian novels are depressing, there's a certain "rightness" in reading about a future that's negative. Why? Because we know that politicians, military people and corporate moguls are capable of doing awful things -- meaning dystopian novels feel kind of honest.

The Hunger Games certainly felt honest. That terrific trilogy gives its memorable characters some uplifting moments, but there are a greater number of downbeat outcomes -- especially in the third installment, Mockingjay. So, even though The Hunger Games (first book) and Catching Fire (second book) are more engaging (albeit often horrific), the final book truly rings true. Dictatorship, revolution and counterrevolution usually cause severe physical and psychological damage to the victims and other participants. To her credit, author Suzanne Collins doesn't sanitize that for us.

Other excellent dystopian novels are also filled with carnage, inhumanity, hopelessness and more. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and The Shape of Things to Come. Mary Shelley's The Last Man. Lois Lowry's The Giver. Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. Jack London's The Iron Heel. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood. Etc.

Sometimes, authors of dystopian literature temporarily ease the tension a bit with humor, as the great Atwood does with some of the clever genetic-engineering terms she coined for Oryx and Crake. And dystopian books can have seemingly utopian elements -- with things not appearing too bad even though they are bad; Brave New World is a perfect example. There are even novels, such as The Shape of Things to Come, that mix dystopian and actual utopian elements.

We admire the best dystopian novels because they're written well and depict people we can relate to. We're fascinated by the terrible things these characters face, and by how some react bravely and some react cowardly or with resignation. We, as readers, rubberneck to see the misery; we can't avert our eyes even as we're enraged by what despots and other vicious officials are doing to citizens. And we're compelled to turn the pages as we wonder if rebels and other members of the populace can somehow remake a wretched society into something more positive. We also wonder who will survive and who won't; I was surprised by some of the characters who end up dying in The Hunger Games (a trilogy I read on the enthusiastic recommendation of commenter "threnodymarch").

Last but not least, we admire dystopian novels because, by giving us worst-case scenarios of the future, maybe our current society can be jolted enough to avoid those scenarios eventually happening in real life. Like some of the characters in dystopian novels, we might feel a little against-all-odds hope. Then again, maybe not...

What are your favorite dystopian novels, and why do you like them? Or are you not that fond of the genre, and why?
Dave Astor's memoir Comic (and Column) Confessional has been published -- and the many famous people mentioned in its pages include some novelists! If you'd like to buy a personally inscribed copy (for less than the Amazon price), contact Dave at dastor@earthlink.net. The Amazon listing, which can be accessed by clicking on the front cover below, contains more details about the book and a look at some of its pages.

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War. Death. Despair. Oppression. Environmental ruin. Yup, when it comes to demoralizing literature, dystopian novels have it all! Yet many of us love this genre, and there are good reasons we do. For one thing, we're reading about rather than actually living through the bad stuff happening in the near or far future (though that bad stuff is often an extrapolation of our troubled current world).