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> The most obviously missed type would appear to be dystopians characterised by extreme disparities between rich and poor, where the dystopic regime is generall
by citruspi 10y ago
> The most obviously missed type would appear to be dystopians characterised by extreme disparities between rich and poor, where the dystopic regime is generally so much better off than the underclass it doesn't need to bother with enforcing or influencing worldviews beyond basic security measure
In Atwood's Oryx and Crake, we learn of a society where the better off live in employer-owned compounds while the less fortunate live in cities referred to as "pleeblands":
“The house, the pool, the furniture – all belonged to the OrganInc Compound, where the top people lived. Increasingly,
the middle-range execs and the junior scientists lived there too. Jimmy’s father said it was better that way, because nobody had to commute to work from the Modules. Despite the sterile transport corridors and the high-speed bullet trains, there was always a risk when you went through the city.”
“Jimmy had never been to the city. He’d only seen it on TV – endless billboards and neon signs and stretches of buildings, tall and short; endless dingy-looking streets, countless vehicles of all kinds, some of them with clouds of smoke coming out the back; thousands of people, hurrying, cheering, rioting. There were other cities too, near and far; some had better neighbourhoods in them, said his father, almost like the Compounds, with high walls around the houses, but those didn’t get on TV much.”
“Compound people didn’t go to the cities unless they had to, and then never alone. They called the cities the pleeblands. Despite the fingerprint identity cards now carried by everyone, public security in the pleeblands was leaky: there were people cruising around in those places who could forge anything and who might be anybody, not to mention the loose change – the addicts, the muggers, the paupers, the crazies. So it was best for everyone at OrganInc Farms to live all in one place, with foolproof procedures.”
“Outside the OrganInc walls and gates and searchlights, things were unpredictable. Inside, they were the way it used to be when Jimmy’s father was a kid, before things got so serious, or that’s what Jimmy’s father said. Jimmy’s mother said it was all artificial, it was just a theme park and you could never bring the old ways back, but Jimmy’s father said why knock it? You could walk around without fear, couldn’t you? Go for a bike ride, sit at a sidewalk café, buy an ice-cream cone? Jimmy knew his father was right, because he himself had done all of these things.”
“Still, the CorpSeCorps men – the ones Jimmy’s father called our people – these men had to be on constant alert.”
Excerpt From: Atwood, Margaret. “Oryx and Crake.” Anchor Books, 2004-03-30. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itun.es/us/f5Qiz.l https://itun.es/us/f5Qiz.l
I'd highly recommend reading it, it's a great book.
- empressplay 10y agoThis sounds somewhat close to the world depicted in the TV show "Incorporated".
- Apocryphon 10y agoOr Jennifer Government by Max Berry, which is just postcyberpunk, really.
- notahacker 10y agoI'd second that recommendation; one of the best-written examples of that type of dystopia.
- igravious 10y ago> This material may be protected by copyright. Posting a longish excerpt to give people a flavour of the book is covered by fair use. Otherwise literary criticism would grind to a halt. And I don't see why you say it _may_ be copyrighted, it was only written in 2004 therefore it's undoubtedly copyrighted. But so what, it's perfectly fine to post snippets without the author's explicit permission. I suspect 99.99% of authors would give you their eternal blessing for disseminating and praising their work. > I'd highly recommend reading it, it's a great book. A dozen times this.
- citruspi 10y ago> Posting a longish excerpt to give people a flavour of the book is covered by fair use. Otherwise literary criticism would grind to a halt. > And I don't see why you say it _may_ be copyrighted, it was only written in 2004 therefore it's undoubtedly copyrighted. But so what, it's perfectly fine to post snippets without the author's explicit permission. I suspect 99.99% of authors would give you their eternal blessing for disseminating and praising their work. When I selected and copied the selections from iBooks, the "Excerpt From:..." and "Check out this book..." lines automatically appeared in my clipboard along with the selections. I figured I'd leave 'em there instead of deleting them. But thank you for the fair use information, I'll keep that in mind in the future.