What ’s the spoiled that can happen if you vote Republican in November ? Science fiction has the answer , with a wealth of floor about right-hand - annex policy taken to their most fearsome extremes . We already recount the scariest dystopia where liberal triumph , and now here ’s our list of the most awesome dark futurity where Sarah Palin hold sway . bill : I ’m not suggest that any of these things are actually board on John McCain ’s campaign platform , any more than the “ bountiful dystopias ” I posted a while back were Obama ’s positions . Neither candidate is running for president on a “ dystopia now ” shibboleth , as far as I make out . As with the liberal dystopias , this is a collection of liberal - clash bourgeois musical theme taken to their furthest extreme . Okay ? Then here we go : Corporations will own your tail end . I could n’t really put this vision of the futurebetter than The onion plant :
Having take the futuristic story of William Gibson , Neal Stephenson , and Philip K. Dick , the route our future shall take will be bleak , indeed – but in a much unlike elbow room . When the on-going tendency of corporate uniting reaches decisive mass in 2030 , the light handful of corporations that remain will be too powerful to resist and will in the end replace all government activity . National borders will crumble , replaced by warring corporate armies who deploy tub - grown Yakuza assassins to take down foe CEOs in the name of Commerce Department .
I literally could not perchance list all of the corporate - dominated dystopias in science fiction . ThinkBlade Runner , Neuromancer , or Metropolis . This siteargues passionately that a cut state and the rise of super - powerful corporations which are practically state in themselves is a of the essence component of cyberpunk . Walter Jon Williams ’ books Hardwired and Voice Of The Whirlwind are both about soldiers of circumstances and fighters who survive in worlds find by corporations . Wikipedia’slist of corporate - dominated dystopias in filmincludes the Alien plastic film , Charlie Jade ( TV ) , The Final Cut , Fortress , Hardware , The Island , Johnny Mnemonic , Max Headroom , One full point O , Parts : The Clonus Horror , Resident Evil , RoboCop , Rollerball , Soylent Green , Super Mario Bros. , Tank Girl , Total Recall and The Truman Show .
Probably my favorite incarnate - dominate dystopia is in Max Barry ’s Jennifer Government , where your job is the most of import thing about you and your last name is the name of the company you crop for . ( This is also Superman’sfavorite book . ) There ’s still a government , but it ’s de-escalate and has very little enforcement power over the giving corporations , which have grown ever more immoral . To the point where they ’ll pay someone to organise a “ gang - concern ” shot at a Nike product launching to give the newest Nikes more cache . Anyway , Jennifer Government author Max Barry has create an on-line secret plan called NationStates , and one of the fictitious nations includesThe Corporate Dystopia Of Wu Corporation :
The Corporate Dystopia of Wu Corporation is a monolithic , economically powerful res publica , renowned for its concluded absence of social eudaemonia . Its hard - nosed , heavily - working , cynical population of 6.219 billion are ruled with an Fe clenched fist by the corrupt , dictatorship government , which oppresses anyone who is n’t on the table of a Fortune 500 company . Large corporations tend to be above the legal philosophy , and use their financial clout to gain ever - increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed .
Another favourite dystopia : The Company , in the Doctor Who story “ The Sunmakers . ” Everybody works for The Company , which house everyone on Pluto and supplies artificial sunshine and a habitable biosphere , and in return you have to work all the sentence . The Company levies extra taxes for everything include your expiry . ( Yes , it ’s a satire of exuberant revenue , but it ’s also a corporate - dominated world . ) There ’s also the awesome dark alternate existence in Charlie Jade , wherecorporations contain everything , splintering implants are mandatory , and citizenry are dissever into castes . Really , I could be here all class listing corporate dystopia . It ’s God ’s rural area , and you just live here ( unless you blaspheme . ) Church and land are no longer disunite , and the state becomes a aureate throne for the church to look down on the huddled slew from . One of theclassictheocratic dystopia is The Handmaid ’s Tale by Margaret Atwood , where a quasi - Christian theocracy overthrows the U.S. government and imposes sumptuary police force regularise how woman can clothe . Pre - marital sex activity is illegal , and sexual deviation is penal with incarnate – or cap – punishment .
There ’s also the newly published young adult novel Bad Faith by Gillian Philip , which her hubby ( I think ) delineate as “ an eerily safe pic of what I imagine the USA would be like if Sarah Palin was in tutelage . ” In the gloomy future , the One Church runs everything , and gangs of extremists run around beating up anyone who defies the One Church ’s sanction . In the Robert Heinleinstory“Revolt In 2100 , ” a small band of Americans rises up against an evil future theocracy . Suzette Haden Elgin ’s Judas Rose seriesalso includes an evil Christian theocracythat oppresses women .
Allen Steele ’s novel Coyote also starts out in an overbearing right - annexe theocratic interlingual rendition of the United States , sleep with as the United Republic . ( It later founder in on itself . ) Besides religious fanaticism , the other factor driving the wage hike of the Republic is the paranoid fear of terrorism . And then in Cave Of Stars by George Zebrowski , the Pope takes over the man ! And it ’s bad . And then there ’s the fantastic government of the Reverend Jimmy Joe II , who oppresses you in the name of the Lord . Lordy ! His authorities involves throwing hoi polloi in prison , where they get beat up by dominatrixes , in the fantastic movie Storm Rebel . you’re able to observe a duad of amazing clips from ithere . You corroborate the troops ( by letting them stomp all over you . ) In novels like Robert Heinlein ’s Starship Troopers and Orson Scott Card ’s Ender ’s Game , a militaristic future Earth is at warfare with foreign bugs , and the military manage great baron . ( In trooper , you ca n’t practice full citizenship , and vote , unless you ’ve served in the war machine . ) There ’s also the all - male militaristic social club of A World Without Women by Day Keene and Leonard Pyun .
And then there ’s Star Wars , especially episodes II and III . George Lucas was n’t precisely subtle in his depiction of a society that gets hang back into an eternal state of war , and the res publica needs more and more power to pursue its opposition . Freedom dies , not in secrecy , but to thundery applause , yadda yadda . And there ’s theanime movieEllcia , where unscrupulous people dig up the remains of a ace - advanced society and employ its advanced technology to find a new militaristic dystopia called Megaronia . No , really – Megaronia . In Marge Piercy ’s feminist skill fiction Greco-Roman Woman On The Edge Of Time , our heroine travels to a glad glazed feminist utopia , where world lactate and everybody wears hemp underwear . Butshe also visitsan alternate future , a horrendous dystopia where the military control everything . There ’s also the whole wrapping of narratives where the security department state gets out of control , and everyone trades their exemption for security system . mass are under invariant surveillance by a thuggish leaders , as exemplified by Alan Moore ’s graphic novel Little Phoebe For Vendetta . We ’re all forced to go back to some fearful idealized version of the fifties . Just think Pleasantville – a monstrous idealize version of the inhibitory , dread past , when people still retrieve Doo - ginzo was music . In this movie , Spider - Man gets a special outback control from a uncanny old cat , and it micro-cook him and his sis inside his preferent sitcom , which is an obvious Leave It To Beaver riff . At first , Spidey is overjoyed , but he finally sees how repressive that B&W conformance really is , and he finally fall in his sister in rebelling against the suppress sameness . Luckily , you could make a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree burst into flame just by masturbating .
We did n’t sign the Kyoto Accord , and now the major planet is trashed . You could argue that the Brobdingnagian genre of eco - disaster SF represents a dystopia where conservatives have triumphed over nature , our greatest enemy of all . There are almosttoo many eco - disaster SF storiesto list , from Wall - eastward to Octavia Butler ’s Xenogenesis series . I went to a reading by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back , where the theme was bionomic demolition , and he aver he ’d written too many whole kit on that topic to choose just one . So he take selections from seven different eco - catastrophes he ’d written . There ’s no deficit of thrilltastic scientific discipline fabrication ecology disaster motion-picture show , include The Day After Tomorrow and Waterworld .
GawkerRobert A. HeinleinRobert Heinlein
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture word in your inbox day by day .
News from the futurity , deliver to your present tense .
You May Also Like
