“At first I couldn't understand why the media was making such a big deal of a billionaire’s death. After all, the people of planet earth had other concerns. The ongoing energy crisis. Catastrophic climate change. Widespread famine, poverty, and disease. Half a dozen wars. You know: “ dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!”  Explicit from the dystopian novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. A dystopia is a failed attempt of a utopia. Dystopian literature and films have become extremely popular what is the cause of this?

One reason why dystopian literature have become popular is the futuristic setting that is present in dystopian novels and movies. In the dystopian novel Ten with a flag it is easy to tell that the setting is futuristic by. The driverless cars that are present throughout the novel. “ It only took him a couple of seconds to connect to the traffic web. Johnnie didn’t like being out of control, it was one of the things I’d found endearing in him; quaint even. This time though, he didn’t even double check the connection. The steering wheel folded and collapsed into the dash”. Driverless car make the setting of Ten with a flag futuristic because although right now driverless cars are being tested when the novel was written driverless car were just an idea. Another thing that makes Ten with a flag futuristic is the predictions that central makes. “ Once you can witness the cellular history of an individual, you can predict future activity through sheer computational power. Central has an over ninety-nine percent success rate with this test. We don’t question the results”. This makes the setting of Ten with a flag futuristic because the ability for a test to accurately predict what your child is going to do doesn’t exist yet. Another reason why dystopian novels might be becoming popular is because of the view of a “perfect” world that the novel alludes to.

The dystopian novel Harrison Bergeron is a great representation of the idea of a “perfect” world. In Harrison Bergeron the world is made to look “perfect” is because of “ All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”. Another way Harrison Bergeron is made to look like a perfect world is by the use of handicaps that are put on people to make them average.  “He wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses.Scrap metal was hung all over him. “ to offset his looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggletooth random”. The last reason why dystopian literature is becoming popular is the way they offer an escape from reality.

In the dystopian novel the Veldt  there are many way that the story allows you an escape from reality for example. The nursery in the story is a room that turns your thoughts into reality. “The walls were white and two dimensional. Now, as george and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls made a quiet noise and seemed to fall away into the distance. Soon an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color. It looked real to the smallest stone and bit yellow summer grass. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun”. That is one way that the Veldt allows an escape from reality another way is by the house in the story. “They walked down the hall of their HappyLife Home, which cost them thirty thousand dollars with everything included. This house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them ”. Thanks to the happylife house the family really doesn’t need to do anything that is why it is an escape from reality.  

The reasons why dystopian literature have become popular is the futuristic setting that they offer, the view of a “perfect” world in the novels, and lastly because they allow a reader an escape from reality. Why makes our world different from a dystopia? And what do we do to change that?