John Sissons

Utopia in Science Fiction: Utopia, Dystopia, or Ustopia?

My research interest is writing science fiction novels. I have finally come to accept the fact that I have written a literary utopia within the larger story arc of my Strike! series of science fiction books. Now, I want to explore what type of utopia I have written. That there are two broad types of literary utopias is plain, at least to me. The first three books we read for this class indulge in what Andrew Milner and Robert Savage describe as “the kind of information overload that so often bedevils utopian narratives” (Milner, 40). These three books represent the first broad type of utopia I have noticed, which are light on story and character development and very heavy on detail. Thomas More wrote in extreme detail every manner of behavior that he wished his fictional Utopians to have. More was not a writer by trade, but a government official. Charlotte Perkins Gilman likewise had other interests besides writing utopian narratives and her story is likewise extremely detailed. Ayn Rand’s Anthem is very detailed as well.

          The second broad type of narrative utopia I have noticed is in our recent reading assignment. The Dispossessed is more literary than the technically detailed prose in the first three books. Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a story about characters that act as real people might. The vision of utopia she expresses on the moon Annares is contrasted closely with the society on its parent planet Urras, which is vastly different. The detail of the workings of the utopia, Annares, is cleverly woven within the story itself and not presented as virtual lists like More’s Utopia. In The Dispossessed we learn that the people of Urras have a society much like our own in twenty-first century America and Le Guin contrasts that society with her version of utopia on Annares.

All four books share the typical minimum traits of a literary utopia: an isolated community inhabited by specially chosen people who cooperate voluntarily with each other. Le Guin, however, makes her observations with very skilled prose because she is a professional writer, unlike the first three authors. As Joanna Page writes, “Utopian narrative is at its most utopian,,., when it demonstrates to us our imprisonment within the present (ideological) moment” (Page, 171). And in that observation Le Guin excels.

          Raymond Williams, however, has refined and identified four basic types of literary utopia and science fiction connections. First “is the paradise, in which a happier life is described as simply existing elsewhere”; second is “the externally altered world, in which a new kind of life has been made possible by an unlooked-for natural event”; third “is the willed transformation, in which a new kind of life has been achieved by human effort; and fourth, the technological transformation, in which a new kind of life has been made possible by a technological discovery” (Williams, 203). Of the four books we have read, only Le Guin’s can reasonably be called science fiction. The first three occur on earth with primitive technology and loosely conform to the first three types of utopia listed by Williams. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed has elements of the third type of Williams’s utopia definition and conforms closely to the fourth type of utopia. To add to Williams’s differences in narrative utopia, Margaret Atwood adds another dimension. In Margaret Atwood’s article “Dire Cartographies: The Roads to Ustopia”, she argues that both utopia and dystopia exist within either narrative form. Her term “ustopia’ is meant to signify that “each contains a latent version of the other” (Atwood, 66).

          J. Jessie Ramirez writes that Le Guin uses what he calls “Anti- Anti- Abundance” in her story of Annares (87). He points out that The Dispossessed was written during “the US’s defeat in Vietnam, the oil crisis, the publication of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth, and the onset of economic recession.” He further argues that 1974 marked the end of “the age of abundance” (86). However, the United States was still the wealthiest, most powerful country on earth in 1974. But, we also had large populations of unhappy people inside our land of plenty, indicating both utopia, where everything was good, and dystopia, where nothing is good, in various locations and sometimes within the same city. Thus, using Ramirez’s argument, the “ustopia” in The Dispossessed would exist in both Annares and Urras, which would reflect Le Guin’s observations of American society at the time she wrote her novel. Annares had people who avoided work and people who stymied progress, which would indicate that a dystopia existed somewhere on that moon. Urras had wealthy elites who impressed the Terran ambassador as living in a utopia while many people on Urras were not as fortunate and lived threadbare lives in keeping with the dystopia seen by the people of Annares.

          I now have Williams’ four definitions of literary utopia combined with Atwood’s ustopia conditions to consider in my quest to define my utopia in Marilyn Carter. Now that I am aware that my utopia may have a dystopia (or at least an element of a dystopia) lurking somewhere inside it, I must postpone any analysis until I find out if Atwood is correct in her observations of literary utopias/dystopias. I would not be surprised if I indeed have an ustopia.

Atwood, Margaret. “Dire Cartographies: The Roads to Ustopia.” In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination. Anchor Books, 2011, pp. 66-96.

Miller, Andrew and Robert Savage. “Pulped Dreams: Utopia and American Pulp Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 35, no. 1, March 2008, pp. 31-47.

Page, Joanna. “Modernity and Cinematic Time in Science Fiction Film.” Science Fiction in  Argentina: Technologies of the Text in a Material Multiverse, Digitalculturebooks, 2016, pp.154-191.

Ramirez, J. Jessie. “From Anti-Abundance to Anti- Anti- Abundance Scarcity, Abundance, and  Utopia in Two Science Fiction Writers.” RCC Perspectives, no. 2, The Imagination of  Limits Exploring Scarcity and Abundance, 2015, pp. 83-90.

Williams, Raymond. “Utopias and Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, November 1978, pp. 203-214.