Police violence, civil unrest, riots, fires, looting, destruction, a “no-go zone” in a major American city, and media suppression, all set against the backdrop of a global pandemic and economic upheaval. It’s our current reality, although it sounds an awful lot like the setting of the next dystopian bestseller/blockbuster.
The dystopia genre has been around for centuries, but the case can be made that dystopian stories are currently experiencing something of a golden age. I’m inclined to believe it, given the smashing success of franchises such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Hunger Games,” that terms like “Orwellian” and “Big Brother” are now common parlance, and that declarations that real-life situations indicate “the simulation is glitching.”
