Dystopia

A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia,kakotopia, or simply anti-utopia) is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is translated as "not-good place", an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, Utopia (the blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty). The novel Utopia was written in the Latin language and English versions are translations of the original piece. The term dystopia is an ironic modern offshoot because it often is used to describe futuristic societies which systematically suppress language and knowledge.

When More penned the novel, he wrote the content in Latin and the title in Greek; at the time Latin was the language of science, and Greek a language of the arts. Utopia directly translates to 'No Place'. This exotic place, a hidden euphemism intended to deceive his peers into listening to revolutionary perspectives on justice, law and society. The term dystopia has a sarcastic undertone as it translates to "Anti No Place", and is often used in place of more concise terms to describe societal conditions - an indication of the loss of language and ability to clearly communicate.

Dystopian societies appear in many artistic works, particularly in stories set in the future. Some of the most famous examples are George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization,totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, and/or technology. However, some authors also use the term to refer to actually-existing societies, many of which are or have been totalitarian states, or societies in an advanced state of collapse and disintegration. An attempt to draw together and compare both the fictional and real dystopias has been made in Gregory Claeys's Dystopia: A Natural History (Oxford University Press, 2016).

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