Welcome back to my musings. It's been a bit. I have been writing just not here. Mostly I've been writing fiction. I've been creating my own little world and peopling it with stories. It's something I've always wanted to do. Years ago I had a writing partner and we were going to create an epic fantasy, which as I look back on seems ridiculous. I had no long fiction experience nor any in collaborative writing. I'm pretty good at short fiction, and this time around that is where I've been playing. After months of writing I have almost produced two complete drafts as well as created a world in which these stories take place. So imagine my surprise when I was alerted to a contest for short fiction writing. There was just one catch, it had to be a work of dystopian fiction.
I am at a point in my life where I am sick of dystopian worlds, post apocalyptic settings. and all otherwise world ending storytelling devices. It has become a very popular genre, and while there is a lot you can do with it in social commentary I think it is safe to say that it's all been said. I'm really quite tired of the end of the world in fiction. Perhaps it became less interesting as I realized that we are living in our own dystopian society. I mean we check all the boxes: pandemic, environmental destruction, rampant injustice and inequality, religious intolerance, unsustainable/predatory economics, and genocide. Did I miss anything? At this point it is the opposite of imaginative to create tales of woe and hopelessness.
I get it, write what you know. They tell you that all the time. Still at what point does it just get stale? Ah yes another fascist society on the brink of destruction due to insert calamity here, where those in power have created a caste/economic system, and crack down on insert group of oppressed people here. For those tales that also charter the downfall of said fascist regime it is also equally unimaginative, as well as inaccurate. At this point I doubt we'd be able to overthrow our corporate masters in violent revolution. I'm also not sure even if we could that we should go that route. I mean I get the appeal of wanting to build guillotines, and shoot billionaires off into space to slowly suffocate. (Of course in our world they do it to themselves so I say let them and just charge them an exorbitant reentry fee). Personally I can't see how we'd ever throw off the shackles of oppression when so many folks still benefit from the system, or where the propaganda is so well entrenched into they psyche of the citizens.
So why am I telling you this? Well I have no interest in participating in creating more dystopian literature. I feel like the original intent of the genre was to serve as a warning to us to be careful of what principles we let rule our power structures. These days it seems more like normalization or bench mark so we can say, "Yeah it's hopeless but at least we're not living in that universe." I am not all Pollyanna either, my stories are not all sweetest and light. Hell my first one involves human trafficking. Still the place I aim to create is a world of wonder, there may be sorrow but there is also great joy and beauty. In any case I want to feed my mind and soul a diet of hope rather than one of resignation. Our world is worth saving, and so are we.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
