This is one reason I dislike the dystopian genre in general – not that people aren’t capable of creating terrible conditions for their fellow human beings; there’s plenty of evidence that they are – but that that’s only part of the story, and not the part I want to focus on or amplify.
(Marvel, also, at the irony of David Brin casting shade at another author for being self-promotional and making loud claims to have come up with key ideas.)
Originally shared by David Brin
Using his WIRED soapbox to promote his new novel, Cory Doctorow takes the occasion also to fight some of the most hoary and destructive instincts of modern, lazy storytelling.
“Here’s how you make a dystopia: Convince people that when disaster strikes, their neighbors are their enemies, not their mutual saviors and responsibilities. The belief that when the lights go out, your neighbors will come over with a shotgun—rather than the contents of their freezer so you can have a barbecue before it all spoils—isn’t just a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s a weaponized narrative. The belief in the barely restrained predatory nature of the people around you is the cause of dystopia, the belief that turns mere crises into catastrophes.”
This paraphrases the core point from my novel The Postman, which I wrote as a rebuttal to the Mad Max genre’s perpetual contempt for the average person. In my novel (and I admit that Kevin Costner did remain faithful to this notion) all hope for a restored civilization rests upon the survivors remembering one core fact: “I was once a mighty and noble being, called a citizen.” And hence, the great accomplishment of the story’s hero is not to defeat the villains, but to remind the people of that central fact.
Rebecca Solnit – one of the finest essayists in America – makes the same point in A Paradise Built in Hell, showing that time and again, our neighbors show pluck and guts, as when 80 average citizens rebelled, aboard flight UA93. And yet, authors and directors relentlessly trot forth the banal dystopia that Cory criticizes.
Doctorow distinguishes this tiresome cliché with his notion of the guardedly upbeat utopia. Not the boring aftermath of an enlightened and better civilization — no drama there! That’s why – in the much better tomorrows of Iain Banks, of Star Trek and my own Kiln People – most of the tales take place at a fringe or frontier. (The Federation is decent and good and fair, which is why we almost never look there.)
Likewise, Doctorow eschews a preachy utopia in favor of portraying its beginning, in danger and ferment. The initial problem may be chaotic and deadly, as in a dystopia, but with a crucial difference.
“Stories of futures in which disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of mistrust. Our disaster recovery is always fastest and smoothest when we work together, when every seat on every lifeboat is taken. Stories in which the breakdown of technology means the breakdown of civilization are a vile libel on humanity itself.” He asserts that: “ the best science fiction does something much more interesting than prediction: It inspires. That science fiction tells us better nations are ours to build and lets us dream vividly of what it might be like to live in those nations.”
As is very often the case, Doctorow presents important and thought-provoking notions. Alas, Cory does tend also to wave signs implying “Look here! I invented this idea!” And so, only in the interests of fairness, I do urge you also to have a look at my much-earlier missive on “The Idiot Plot,” and compare.
http://www.davidbrin.com/idiotplot.html
