Dystopia

Dystopia is a genre of prose (more rarely dramatic or poetic) literature that depicts an imaginary future society built on seemingly perfect principles which in reality turn into the totalitarian suppression of the individual and the destruction of freedom, memory, and humanity. Dystopia is the critical negation of utopia: it warns of the dangers of technocracy, totalitarianism, and depersonalization. Classic world examples are Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. In Ukrainian literature the genre is approached by Volodymyr Vynnychenko's novel The Solar Machine, which some scholars read as a dystopia; dystopian features mark modern prose, in particular works that reflect on the experience of totalitarianism and wars, as well as the science fiction of Oles Berdnyk and contemporary authors.