238. Do Christians Need Dystopian Fiction?

Fantastical Truth

Boom. Doom. Gloom. Criminals pillage. Cities burn. Mobs rampage. Tyrants rule with iron fists. We live in a society! People here often feel we’re overdue for dystopia. Even now, dystopian tales prove popular among many readers. Let’s explore why and ask whether Christian fans really need these stories.

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Quotes and notes

• How to Help Your Teens Engage Dystopian Tales, Ticia Messing
• 137. Which Dystopian Doom Sounds Worse, Orwell’s ‘1984’ or Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’?
• The Giver Quartet Compares Dystopian Control with Human Purpose, Elijah David
• 229. What If Christians Joined Civil War Against Immortal Elites? | The Wall by Brian Penn
• “The Will of the People,” by Tim Pool

Concession stand

• This is part of our Fiction’s Chief End series, thus the word need.
• The dystopian genre has biblical roots. It’s echoed in the real-life encounters between David and King Saul, and in the parable Jesus told about the persistent widow.
• Dystopian stories usually have Man vs. Society conflict.
• Dystopia is one of the founding stories of the United States, along with the frontier.
• We’re recording this after a national election in the U.S.
• The timing is a feature, not a bug–purposeful, not accidental.
• In this transition period, everyone is forwarding their vision for the future, and warning of dark possibilities they’ve seen in stories.
• But we do our best to avoid conversations about particular politicians or policies.
• So we will also avoid the cliched discussions about dystopia tropes (such as teenage rebel love triangles).

1. Dystopian fiction helps us face real-life dystopia

• Most of us don’t have access to the levers of power in our political system.
• This genre is not primarily for political leaders. These stories usually focus on people with very little political capital.
• This is the first reason why dystopian fiction is useful for the average citizen: it gives us a blueprint for extreme resilience.
• For decades now, every election has been billed as “the most important of our lifetime.”
• Beware the fabricated dystopia that partisan media is trying to convince you that you live in.
• Because the problem is that people already think they are living in a dystopian world.
• That’s where books in this genre are a helpful corrective: they show us a world that’s truly swallowed by tyranny.
• More than that, they (usually) show us how people survive, respond, and in some cases even conquer the tyrants.
• Again, you may think the tyrant is in the White House, or you may think the tyrants are in the Deep State. Or perhaps the World Economic Forum. Or just your HOA. Doesn’t matter. We usually don’t get the government we want, or if we do, it doesn’t last long. And we all have a primitive fear of someone’s boot stomping on our neck.
• That’s why entering the imagination of an author can be a helpful way of facing this fear.

2. Dystopian stories give us a reverse “how to” manual

• Dystopian stories are a photo negative of the life we hope to enjoy.
• They show us what to avoid as a society, the logical end of unchecked corruption, immorality, abuse of power.
• Helps us spot the very first steps of the road into hell, which is usually paved with good intentions. The problem is that small compromises have compound interest.

You can look the other way once, and it’s no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that’s all you’re doing; compromising, because that’s the way you think things are done. You know those guys I busted? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren’t, they weren’t bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised… Once.
— Jack Bauer, 24

• They also reveal what we should fight for.
• Reminds us not to take our freedoms for granted.

3. Dystopian novels force us to face the darkness within

• One hidden danger of dystopian fiction is wish fulfillment.
• The best dystopian fiction goes beyond just smashing a bad system and challenges the protagonists to build a new system.
• This is what’s at the center of the Red Rising series.
• Shows us what to avoid in society–by pointing out what we need to beware of in ourselves.
• That question of “How far would you go?” is very relevant today, given conversations about political revenge.

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible (p. 132).”

—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Com station

Top question for listeners

• How have dystopian stories helped you fight for a better world?

Winner of the sharing contest for Mike Duran’s Christian Horror

• This week’s winner is Bryan Timothy Mitchell!
• Going into next year, we plan to do more book giveaways.

Next on Fantastical Truth

We love stories with fine writing. As the Scripture says, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” But often readers want basic style, quick tools of phrase for the simple job of getting you in and out of a fantastical work of fiction. Which kind of stories do you prefer and why?