Dystopia: Difference between revisions

* Kornbluth's ''The Marching Morons'' has similar themes to the film ''Idiocracy'', above. Subverted in that the super-intelligent aristocracy are the ones slaving away, to keep the vast mentally-challenged majority from killing themselves out of sheer incompetence.

** Kornbluth produced some other memorably nasty dystopias. The two worst are probably the militarized, back-stabbing Denv with its endless, pointless nuclear war against Ellay, and the [[Religion of Evil|sadistic Merdeka cult]], whose ideas of parenting include "child-flogging benches" and cheerful nursery rhymes such as

She thrust him down and broke his crown; it was a lovely slaughter. }}

* [[Ayn Rand]]'s novella ''[[Anthem]]'' follows the awakening and rebellion of the main character in a collectivist dystopia where individual identity is suppressed, and all citizens are taught to consider themselves interchangeable and replaceable parts in a great machine. On top of that, the government has mandated cultural and [[Medieval Stasis|technological stasis]] at a pre-Industrial Revolution level.

* ''[[Feng Shui]]'' : The 2056 juncture of the [[Tabletop Games|Tabletop Game]] is equal parts ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' and ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. The Buro government monitors its citizens constantly, same-race relationships are frowned upon at best as "racist" and punished at worst, guns and kung fu are outlawed, it's a crime to be unhappy, all TV (except for advertising) is pay-per-view, you can't get ahead unless you work for the Buro, and the only thing worse than falling into the Public Order (2056's [[Police Brutality|brutal police]]) machine is letting the Bureau of Happiness and Productivity get hold of you -- [[Mind Rape]] is the absolute kindest term for what these guys do to people. And that's not even mentioning the CDCA (the group responsible for arcanowave technology and the Abominations) and the creepifying horrors that ''they'' get up to.

* ''[[Shadowrun]]''. One of the most famous cyberpunk RPGs set in a Dystopia, one that is played to the hilt just as described at the top of the page. Corporations are huge, often quite literally evil, and ''all'' of them employ multiple packs of criminals to do their dirty work. Racism has been given up, but only because [[Humans Are Bastards|people are such assholes]] that they'd rather focus on [[Fantastic Racism]]. Heck, there's even this one bit from the fourth edition core book, talking about the availability of medical treatment, which cites privatized health care as one of the causes of dystopia (oddly enough, using the criticisms usually leveled at socialized/universal healthcare):

** And that's if you're a ''legal'' citizen with a proper SIN. [[It Gets Worse|For everyone else...]]

* ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'' features a couple of them in the form of [[Another Dimension|Bardos]]: