dystopia

Imaginary society whose evil qualities are meant to serve as a moral or political warning. The term was coined in 1868 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, and is the opposite of a Utopia. George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) are examples of novels about dystopias. Dystopias are common in science fiction.

The French writer Jules Verne and the English writer H G Wells described dystopias in the 19th century. The film Metropolis 1927 by the Austrian director Fritz Lang shows, like most dystopias, a highly mechanized society in which individual rights are suppressed by a ruling elite. This

society could be either capitalist, as in Jack London's novel The Iron Heel 1907, or socialist, as in Ayn Rand's Anthem 1938. Other dystopian novels are Fahrenheit 451 1953 by Ray Bradbury and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.