interesting site for futurists with a pessimistic bent . . . or may just for realists? . . . :shrug:
http://hem.passagen.se/replikant/"The word 'dystopia' is the commonly used antonym of 'eutopia'
and denotes that class of hypothetical societies containing images of worlds worse than our own. <...> Dystopian images are almost invariably images of future society, pointing fearfully at the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction." (Grolier's Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)
"<...> dystopian fiction looks at totalitarian dictatorship as its prototype, a society that puts its whole population continuously on trial, a society that finds its essence in concentration camps, that is, in disenfranchising and enslaving entire classes of its own citizens, a society that, by glorifying and justifying violence by law, preys upon itself. <...> dystopian society is what we would today call dysfunctional; it reveals the lack of the very qualities that traditionally justify or set the raison d'être for a community." (Erika Gottlieb's Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of Terror and Trial)
"A dystopia is any society considered to be undesirable, for any of a number of reasons. The term was coined as a converse to a Utopia, and is most usually used to refer to a fictional (often near-future) society where current social trends are taken to nightmarish extremes. <…> Often, the difference between a Utopia and a Dystopia is in the author's point of view. <…> Dystopias are frequently written as warnings, or as satires, showing current trends extrapolated to a nightmarish conclusion. <…> A dystopia is all too closely connected to current-day society." (Wikipedia On-line Dictionary)
http://hem.passagen.se/replikant/
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