List all of the fictional "Dystopias" that are actually better than our current world

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

Cyberpunk. Most people live in positively spacious apartments compared to the pod life, you can still own your own vehicle, you can go to the Moon, taxes aren't so bad, degeneracy, homelessness, and crime are about equivalent to today, and just like our world your only choice for a job is something shitty or being a corporate drone (neither of which pay well). There also doesn't seem to be any equivalent of vaccine mandates, mask mandates, or climate lockdowns. Night City is also a lot cleaner than the average American city.

You can also buy guns from vending machines and the 2nd amendment is valued for the most part, so you can easily defend yourself with little to no legal repercussions. Limbs and organs are also easily replaceable with readily accessible cyberware and cybernetics.

 

[Space Police]

The Terran Empire, at least in the brief window when Spock was ruling it.

 

[Crocodylus Acutus]

Does Animal Farm count? I know its an allegory for the Soviet Union, but I think talking animals and pigs walking on two legs is funi, and I would have many laugh if it were real.

 

[Aunt Carol]

Does The Village, from The Prisoner, count?

It always seemed like there was a very high ratio of boring background people vs Pat and whoever else was being actively fucked with this week. I could wear horizontal stripes, quietly read books and wander through well-manicured gardens, no problem. Put in a few shifts driving a Mini Moke or staffing The Hospital. It'd be nice.


"Yeah have fun starving on an escape raft or getting drugged again, dumbass. Me and the gang are heading out to play croquet, be seeing you lmao"

 

[Tablet County]

I'd say "Brazil!" but other than the locale real life isn't all that different.

 

[Irregardless]

the man in the high castle, of course

Idk if you watched the show, but season 3 decided to inform us that aside from all the facism and nazi's there was actually ton's of totally real LGTB people everywhere and it wasn't weird at all.

 

[Skeletonized Cow]

I think the closest thing as a serious answer is Brave New World. People today are barely less shallow than the citizens of the World-State, so we don't really lose anything but we gain the centuries of social stability and peace.

 

[Yamamura]

I don't know if it counts but The Truman Show? He's pretty much set for life. He has an easy job where his work doesn't actually do anything because it's not real. He owns a house and a car. Sure everyone is an actor, but if someone pretended to be my friend for free, Hell I'll take it, it's better than right now at least. My spouse may talk like a commercial all the time, but at least someone's making me a cup of cocoa.

In exchange for having people internationally watching me masturbate. I'd say it's an OKish deal.

 

[Dysnomia]

That would be terrible, because in the book the idea is that these are mostly desperate kids, those who need to prove something, etc. and the reward is enormous, ostensibly greater than winning the lottery. It's anything you want.

The participants may only have a 1% chance of winning, but society has a 100% chance of one long-legged hood negro or Appalachian white trash teenager winning more power than most Top 500 CEOs. The damage done by that would be way greater than any benefit of losing 99 undesirables.

It's a little odd but I don't think the reader is meant to put a lot of thought into that part. It's about the drama of the walk itself.

Doesn't the kid who wins at the end drop dead? It's been a long time since I read the book.

I think the closest thing as a serious answer is Brave New World. People today are barely less shallow than the citizens of the World-State, so we don't really lose anything but we gain the centuries of social stability and peace.

And they're just as over medicated. Take your happy pills and go play electronic golf.

 

[DogZero]

During the height of the black death, the mortality rate was around 50%. Half of everyone you know or ever knew would be dead. Piles of corpses in some places littered the streets and a significant amount of people believed the world was literally ending. This dystopia of a world ending was a fiction. The world did not end, but the conviction it would, really existed in the minds of many people. They still had a fertility rate above 2.

A civilization which can not reproduce and thus propagate itself has failed its most core and fundamental directive. It doesn't matter how advanced our technology is, how comfortable we are, how much we "know" or how beautiful our art is, given the choice between "to be" and "not to be" our civilization collectively chooses the later.

The us fertility rate is currently 1.7

 

[Biker]

demolition man.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

That would be terrible, because in the book the idea is that these are mostly desperate kids, those who need to prove something, etc. and the reward is enormous, ostensibly greater than winning the lottery. It's anything you want.

The participants may only have a 1% chance of winning, but society has a 100% chance of one long-legged hood negro or Appalachian white trash teenager winning more power than most Top 500 CEOs. The damage done by that would be way greater than any benefit of losing 99 undesirables.

It's a little odd but I don't think the reader is meant to put a lot of thought into that part. It's about the drama of the walk itself.

Spoilers for the end of the book.

He kind of addresses it indirectly. Consider that by the end Garrity is so worn out he can't even fathom that the walk is over, he goes right past the Major and tries to keep walking, possibly dying depending on how you read the final page. The winner either dies or is in no condition to request something intelligent, at that point they might just request the chance to sleep, to rest, and then wake up later to realize that yep, that counted. Also, Garrity's dad was killed for being a dissident. Had someone asked for something that could cause damage to the current order, the winner would probably commit suicide by two in the back of the head.

But yeah, the drama is what the story's about. I was surprised at how gripped I was reading about these kids just walking along and talking to each other. They tell their stories, make new friends, and then one by one over two hundred pages you lose them. It's weird how effective King was with it.

 

[ShooterOfCum]

Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40,000. You die in horrible agony on the Imperial front against Orks or in a cultist shoot-out in a hive city, but at least you die for a good reason, as the foreverwar(s) is actually an existential threat to your species. The High Lords don't pretend that they are not walking definitions of aristocrat rulers. People who are corrupt get fucked by everything just as much as you do. You get to sight-see worlds around the Milky Way Galaxy. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to get the Emperor's Blessing one day.

 

[Chongqing]

In fight club the narrator squatted in an abandoned house that no one wanted, not a nice house owned by someone trying to evict him.

They also had support groups, which may seem like nothing but it's actually a great resource.

 

[BLACKHAWK_Entropy]

fate/extella
only saying cause the real future is worse.

although, it depends on who cares.

 

[Overly Serious]

The moment I saw the thread title I knew there was zero chance of me getting to reply Starship Troopers before someone else had beaten me to it. And I was right!

What about The Empire from Star Wars? Could be grim but at least there was peace and it was large enough that the Empire could never really stamp out all the interesting people to meet or the places to go. The worst dystopias are everywhere but the Empire was never fully in control of even its own Space, let alone all the galaxy beyond its borders.

Judge Dread... The police are actually fight crime and not mean tweets unlike in the UK.

They do. But there's also about one of them for every hundred thousand people so you're left to pretty much institute your own authorities and police yourselves.

What am I saying - Judge Dredd is totally the answer here!

Warhammer 40k: at least freaks are crushed under the boot of 7ft tall walking battle tanks known as Space Marines. I'll take my exterminatus at the hands of some zealot inquisitor if it means I can watch the degens burn with me.

See I was going to disagree with you about WH40K because whilst there are 7' walking battle tanks, for the huge majority of people life is a miserable birth to death life of back-breaking work. In one of the novels a Space Marine finds an approved romance novel in the ruins of some worker's hab dome entitled: "My love for you is exceeded only by my love for the Emperor". Life is terrible for the average citizen. But then I read this reply

Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40,000. You die in horrible agony on the Imperial front against Orks or in a cultist shoot-out in a hive city, but at least you die for a good reason, as the foreverwar(s) is actually an existential threat to your species. The High Lords don't pretend that they are not walking definitions of aristocrat rulers. People who are corrupt get fucked by everything just as much as you do. You get to sight-see worlds around the Milky Way Galaxy. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to get the Emperor's Blessing one day.

and I realised that even if that even if life is terrible, you're actually still part of something that has real meaning. And that's worth a lot.

Which is the same reason I disagree so much with this reply:

I think the closest thing as a serious answer is Brave New World. People today are barely less shallow than the citizens of the World-State, so we don't really lose anything but we gain the centuries of social stability and peace.

The society of Brave New World is a meaningless debasement of all that makes us human. It is a society with institutionalised child abuse to sexualise everything and aversion therapy to drive curiosity and enjoyment in learning out of an infant's mind. People spend their entire existence in a cycle of drug dependency and obedience. Aldous Huxley's contemporary George Orwell penned a dystopia in which freedom was impossible. Huxley's is a society where the desire for freedom itself has been medicalised away. It's horrible.

Does The Village, from The Prisoner, count?

It always seemed like there was a very high ratio of boring background people vs Pat and whoever else was being actively fucked with this week. I could wear horizontal stripes, quietly read books and wander through well-manicured gardens, no problem. Put in a few shifts driving a Mini Moke or staffing The Hospital. It'd be nice.

View attachment 5886559
"Yeah have fun starving on an escape raft or getting drugged again, dumbass. Me and the gang are heading out to play croquet, be seeing you lmao"

The Village was a very paranoid place. A lot of those background people might have been inconvenient people like Number Six, never knowing who they could trust and undergoing the same mind games he was. Granted, croquet and buttered crumpets sounds nicer than a lot of dystopias.

 

[Skeletonized Cow]

The moment I saw the thread title I knew there was zero chance of me getting to reply Starship Troopers before someone else had beaten me to it. And I was right!

Well, are you talking about the Book or the Movie? I don't remember the movie enough, but the book isn't a dystopia at all.

The society of Brave New World is a meaningless debasement of all that makes us human. It is a society with institutionalised child abuse to sexualise everything and aversion therapy to drive curiosity and enjoyment in learning out of an infant's mind. People spend their entire existence in a cycle of drug dependency and obedience. Aldous Huxley's contemporary George Orwell penned a dystopia in which freedom was impossible. Huxley's is a society where the desire for freedom itself has been medicalised away. It's horrible.

That's kind of my point. While possibly a bit melodramatic, the Western world is increasingly descending into a society that almost taking Huxley's ideas as inspiration.

 

[mintjulep]

Hear me out- but the Handmaid's Tale or Houellebecq's Submission. A modern religious theocracy is the only hope for the population to not die off.

 

[SIMIΔN]

A modern religious theocracy is the only hope for the population to not die off.

Basically Islam if it prohibited cousin marriage and didn't see all physical forces as God's will

 

[Yamamura]

In fight club the narrator squatted in an abandoned house that no one wanted, not a nice house owned by someone trying to evict him.

They also had support groups, which may seem like nothing but it's actually a great resource.

Even when I was watching Fight Club for the first time I never really thought his life was all that bad honestly. His life seemed unremarkable at most, but it didn't look like he was being underpaid or particularly stressed at work, just kinda bored. Though one could also theoretically argue that he's a white collar worker who's getting the long end of the stick of the dystopia (who's only grievance with life is he can't find meaning in the Ikea furniture he buys) while the work class die in car accidents from the crappy cars his company doesn't recall.