Writing in a Time of Dystopia
By Cathy Yardley | November 5, 2024 |
Photo by Squirrelbrand
Dystopia can be enjoyable to write, but it’s painful to live in.
Let’s take a quick peek at cyberpunk. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as:
“a genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology.”
It has been around since the 60s, showcasing what sci-fi author Bruce Sterling terms “low-life and high tech.”
The world is oppressive, and those within it struggle to survive. There’s brazen violence, class disparity, and clawing despair hidden behind flashy, jaw-dropping technological achievement.
Rosy idealists don’t last long on these mean streets. Anti-heroes only need apply, if you keep your morals flexible even if your intentions are good.
Cyberpunk is hopeless by nature
There are no happy endings. Cyberpunk as a genre emphasizes that “the house always wins.”
If you’re in the system, you cannot beat the system. You can only:
- find a fleeting happiness in the moment (in a relationship, with a small win that you know will eventually be stripped from you)
- become enough of a monster that you succeed within the system, constantly fighting to maintain your place, or
- with luck, find some way to escape the system.
When life imitates art
A quick glance at the news shows a world polarized, in varying states of conflict and chaos, with many places suffering war or environmental disaster. All against a technicolor backdrop of technical promise and A.I. everywhere, for everything.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed to the point of numbness and disassociation.
What’s worse, for some it’s become de rigueur for some to performatively embrace nihilism and extremism. (My Gen Z son taught me the term edgelord, meaning, also according to Oxford, “a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online.”)
So what’s the point of writing anything in the face of all this pain, hopelessness, and ultimate destruction? Other than playing your violin on the Titanic, or raging against the dying of the light… how will writing do anything in the face of a nightmare?
A counterpoint: solarpunk
Recently, I was fascinated to discover the existence of solarpunk.
While my beloved Oxford hasn’t quite caught up to this one, I resorted to Dictionary.com and got the following definition:
“an optimistic environmentalist subgenre of speculative fiction, art, and design that envisions future life on Earth transformed by the use of sustainable energy, close co-existence of human beings with nature, and progressive sociopolitical values.”
Interestingly, it has some similar trappings of cyberpunk, as far as fast progression of technology, but instead of responding with a projected outcome of decay and destruction, it shows what happens, or rather what could happen, if people are responding differently.
In these stories, there is still conflict and drama. But it’s a different kind of tension – and it shows a potential dream, rather than a prison sentence, thanks to deliberately refusing pessimism. You can read this in works by Ursula K. Leguin, among others.
The rise of cottagecore
I’ve witnessed an increase in offerings that promote what they’re calling “cottagecore” with an aesthetic of coziness, comfort, and natural beauty. Think hobbit holes, or a Hideo Miyazaki film. Technology used thoughtfully, with purpose and with good results… in balance.
For every edgelord, perhaps even outstripping them, there are those people searching for an alternative. They want joy, and beauty, and, to put it bluntly, rest.
In an unrelenting world, they want relief. They’re just not sure how to get there, so they retreat into these worlds as a result.
The glorification of tragedy
Unfortunately, in literary fiction especially, a “happy ending” is often seen as “less than” – requiring less skill, of lesser critical importance and heft, and of lesser social value. It’s dismissed as unrealistic, catering to the reader, and therefore easy. Trite. Pointless.
The problem with this, as I see it: happiness and hopefulness, achieving triumph in a noble if seemingly hopeless cause, should not be something discounted as trite or unrealistic.
Because as long as you believe it’s unrealistic, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pain becomes the default factory setting, and vicious struggle becomes the only outcome.
Does that mean you have to write bubbly and happy “fluff” then? Just light comedies, low stakes, low angst?
No. But seeing it as a binary is part of the problem.
Hope. Is. Substantive.
We need to start treating it as such.Writing with positivity and a thoughtful examination of possible avenues for change is as challenging and worthwhile a pursuit as any author could undertake.
Does that mean that you force endings to somehow miraculously work, to make everyone happy with a cheat? Also no.
(While I do feel that “pure entertainment” for the sheer sake of giving people joy definitely has its place and needs no justification, if that’s not you, don’t push it.)
But if you’re looking to write something “serious,” something with impact, and you’re feeling burdened by the world around you, then addressing the challenges we’re seeing and asking “how do I create triumph out of this tragedy? Given these constraints, how can my protagonist change the system, or barring that, burn it down?” are what will lead us to possible solutions.
Fiction helps spark ideas. It influences readers and shapes the future.
It’s how we fight, and how we’ll change the world… even if it ultimately just changes ourselves.
What do you want your fiction to do in the world? How are you going to move forward?
Cathy Yardley has published over 33 novels, novellas, and serialized fiction, both traditionally and independently. In 2011, she started RockYourWriting.com, with the mission of helping novelists make a living. She has helped hundreds of authors as a developmental editor, writing coach, and through her “plot sessions” – one-on-one calls that get authors from concept to plot points in one hour. She’s also written the Rock Your Writing series of reference books, taking authors through the writing cycle, from concept to completion. Sign up for her newsletter, and you can receive free downloads to help you plot and revise your novel.
[coffee]
I think what you’re looking for is hopepunk:
https://festive.ninja/one-atom-of-justice-one-molecule-of-mercy-and-the-empire-of-unsheathed-knives-alexandra-rowland/
https://festive.ninja/2019/03/26/hopepunk-articles-resources-and-recordings/
It’s where my writing is based.
Excellent thoughts, Cathy — perfect for today.
We really do seem to be living in a cyberpunk world now: the all-pervasive internet, the civil struggles, the sense of nature collapsing “in the background” as we turn on each other. And yet… solarpunk, and cottagecore, what if we did put our minds to a different vision? And those are just the images, not digging into the human choices that could *make* that difference, and how many other stories could explore them.
And for us writers, it’s too easy to see the world as story problems. A story doesn’t start until a body drops (literally or otherwise), and solving that only leaves us ready to write the next story’s issue. Add to that the alleged superiority of tragedy and “realism” over hope, and…
But there IS more than that. Sometimes it’s as simple as the writing (and the living) asking, not “yes, but how is it broken?” but “how *much* is it broken?” and go on to fix it.
Bravo, Kathy. Anyone who has ever tried to write a “happy “ ending that feels both credible and earned knows it ain’t no picnic. The reason? I suspect it lies in the curious human trait of remembering and thus favoring pain over promise. It’s why losing hurts more than winning pleases.
But it was for this reason James Joyce considered comedy superior to tragedy as a literary form. Because joy is so much harder to bring to life in a convincing way than sorrow.
Personally, I have long been the kind of person who could cast a dark cloud on any silver lining you gave me. As I have aged and written more I’ve come to recognize how small, meager, and self-serving that is. I wish to be as clear-eyed as possible, but that means I can’t wallow in misery and think it’s wisdom.
Great post for Election Day. Be well.
Introspection might be a gift I could give my readers as they involve themselves in the problems of my characters. Some fiction helps distraction and some causes the reader to stop reading and think, wonder, apply the substance to their own lives and choices. Whatever response is created by writing and reading I applaud it, as it intensifies aspects of our humanity. As always thanks for your post.
Yup, it sure feels like we’ve been living in an Orwellian world. I saw a great meme: “Make 1984 fiction again.” I’ve never lost hope, Kathy, and this is why I keep writing and singing. To reach and connect with even a single human being is of infinite value. Thanks for writing.
Good topic for today, Cathy, and we are in agreement on so many points! But I feel the need to gently defend my chosen genre of cyberpunk, against the charges of inherent hopelessness.
It’s a difficult subgenre even to pin down, as two lively panel discussions I’ve participated in can attest. Is cyberpunk its aesthetics or its themes? Is it automatically wedded to a specific politics or philosophy? Ask three cyberpunk authors and you’ll likely get three divergent answers. Ask them over the course of decades, and it gets even more complicated. (William Gibson’s own most recent books, The Peripheral, and Agency, are ultimately downright hopepunk, I’d argue, all while staying in genre bounds. Cory Doctorow’s excellent novella, Unauthorized Bread, wrests hope and community from the worst of techno-dystopia.)
To me, the cyberpunk I want to write (and to read!) presents the very real threats of extreme inequality and surveillance culture, and explores how rapid changes in technology change the ways we relate to each other and ourselves. These are desperately present questions that demand a lot of thought about what our possible futures might look like on current and alternative trajectories. But there’s ample (and fertile) room in that setup to explore creative and even transformative acts of resistance and solidarity. Sometimes you can bundle the hope right in along with the warning. (Hum, by Helen Phillips, pulls off a pretty masterful tonal shift, towards its end, *to* that end.)
We’re entirely in agreement on how unhelpful it is to label hope “unrealistic,” both in art and in real life. Surely our collective imaginations are more than up to the task on both. For some readers and writers it’s just easier to find the entry point to entertaining hope when darker contexts are acknowledged and named, before boldly exploring what acts of resistance and betterment would look like.
Viva solarpunk, viva cottagecore, viva hope in any form we can find it! Let’s keep passing it on.
Marianna, I’m so sorry that I slammed cyberpunk with such a generality! It’s a wonderful genre, and there are amazing authors there. (I adore William Gibson.) And of course, no genre or subgenre is monolithic, and that emphasis is totally on me. I shouldn’t have been so glibly all-encompassing.
I think my biggest concern is when people take it as an exemplar instead of a cautionary tale — like people who think that Tyler Durder was the “hero” of Fight Club or that the character Homelander is someone aspirational in the show The Boys. And I’ll admit… I’m more burned out that I thought, but that’s no excuse for overgeneralizing. Thanks for calling this out.
Hello Cathy. Thanks for educating me on new terms. What most bothers me about so much current fiction is that it’s not the product of lived experience. It’s fantasized expressions of self-pity, of unearned angst. Much of it appeals to an adolescent sensibility, which may be why so many novels now target the YA readership.
And I agree with you on this: “Unfortunately, in literary fiction especially, a “happy ending” is often seen as “less than” – requiring less skill, of lesser critical importance and heft, and of lesser social value.” The Brits are true believers in this regard: Upbeat = escapist entertainment. This is nonsense. A positive outcome must be hard-won to be convincing, but that’s just true of anything well written.
Thanks for a valuable post.
For some reason, and in spite of chronic pain, illness, disability, and just plain old inconvenience, I am an optimist. I believe people can work things out, many of them.
But I also believe they come up against circumstances they had no role in creating – but now have to deal with.
I write mainstream fiction. I want it believable and realistic as well as out of the ordinary. And I want wins hard-fought.
Makes for interesting times writing. And should have undertones of both dread and hope.
This was a great piece! I’m excited to see more people talking about solarpunk as I have recently been trolling around the internet, finding small pockets of solarpunk communities.
I am of the firm belief that solarpunk as a genre is one breakout piece away from entering the zeitgeist. It currently is ethereal as a genre without one solid anchor for people to build from (apart from one chobani ad [which is problematic for various reasons]). Solarpunk is a peripheral genre, while the cottagecore arsthetic is far more mainstream at the present, as seen on Tik-Tok and other social media platforms.
I am so excited to see the genre’s breakout because at this time, hope is punk.