Anti-Utopia
Entry updated 25 January 2021. Tagged: Theme.
A term sometimes used to denote the dark opposite of Utopia, as surveyed in this encyclopedia's entry Dystopia (the term normally used here). For example, James Blish in The Issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction (coll 1964) as by William Atheling Jr describes The Space Merchants (July-August 1952 Galaxy as "Gravy Planet"; rev and cut 1953) by Frederik Pohl and C M Kornbluth as an "anti-utopia (or dystopia, or comic inferno – choose your own term)" and cites Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) as a thematic antecedent. The Comic Inferno allusion implies some measure of included Satire, not a necessary ingredient of dystopia in general. [DRL]
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