I’ve always been a fan of the dystopian genre. From its corrupt governments, to humanity’s twisted evolution, to even the macabre details in the setting, it’s this kind of literature that’s led many readers to understand not just the story itself, but how the writer perceives humanity. They understand the author’s intent when they see the dangers of losing control, of what happens when everything spirals out from under us, of when good and evil intertwine, so much so that eventually, there’s nothing to separate the two. It’s these lessons that are the hardest to ignore, especially when readying dystopian fiction. Despite this, the conflicts found within dystopian novels can often be separated into two categories: political corruption and social degradation.

Political corruption
Politics is a messy business. If you turn on the news right now, no doubt you’d find a new scandal surrounding some politician, or even crisis headlines about yet another leader torturing their people for their own benefit. Despite them trying to label themselves as good, many of us wouldn’t really call them that in a sense. The same can be said for characters in books. We tend to want to believe that we can escape from the real world by reading this genre, but unfortunately, even these worlds are plagued with suffering. For example, in The Lesser of Evils, by Daniel Settanni, the protagonist’s mother has sectioned off territories that are a liability, as she tries to conserve what little water they have left. In The Wolves Within Our Walls, by L.E Flinders, the teenagers kill people all for the sake of their “utopia”, a place rife with grief, sadness, and loss.

Social Justice
Of course, with political corruption comes the declining morality and quality of life in society. People roam the streets, desperately trying to, at the very least, survive, much less thrive. People are willing to do whatever it takes to live because, surprisingly enough, nobody wants to die. Just like the groups who demand representation and justice for all the hate crimes committed against them, so too do the characters who endeavor to fight for a better world. For instance, in Black and White, by Nick Wilford, people are struggling to live while in the midst of the dirt, the rich elite are too busy basking in their cleanliness to care. In The Feral Sentence, by C.G. Julian, prisoners are sent to an island to live, abandoned by the governments that left them there.

It’s a cycle, essentially. While there is more to dystopian novels than these two factors, it’s these very things that set the backdrop for how the character deals with conflicts, and how they plan to solve those problems. After all, fictional characters and actual people aren’t all that different; we all want some savior to come along and simply fix all of our problems. But unfortunately, that’s just not how the world works.