My Own Private Dystopia

Wanna have some fun? Me too. Let's rewrite a classic: Thomas More's Utopia.

But first, a warning.

All dystopian sci-fi falls into two categories. You already know em, but for the sake of being a dick about it, here are two unnecessary paragraphs.

The first is 1984, a totalitarian society maintained by the cultivation and management of fear. Everybody is afraid of everybody. Either you're a government agent, or liable to rat me out to one. In essence, it's a fascist world with a micro-thin veneer of patriotic duty.

 

The second is Brave New World, an earthly paradise predicated on lies, drugs and pervasive engineering (civil, genetic or otherwise). It's like the pre-1865 American South. Except the slaves are literally born for work and nothing else, the gentry are born for leisure and 'being in charge,' and there's no Lincoln to make it all better.

 

A literary work of this order can have elements of both, but will always fall more heavily to one side or the other.

Just like in real life.

  

On the other side of the brain is Utopian fiction, which deals exclusively with fantasy. Seriously. The word "utopia" literally means "no place." It's an exercise (if you can all it that) in wondering what you would do if you won $20,000,000.00 in some lottery, or what the rules would be if you took over the world.

In other words, it's the third category of dystopian fiction: the ruler's point of view.

 

In the Case of Total Global Domination

 
I'd legalize every drug, revoke charity status for churches, pay Reparations (plus interest), throw dinner parties for the unemployed on Monday nights, give every new baby a gun, switch the weekdays and weekends around, and order NASA to start work on a solar-powered desalinizing affordable-house generator.

Yeah, I admit it. I would also take a bath in chocolate sauce, sky-dive off that ridiculous tower in Dubai, and change the rules so that supermodels have to exceed a certain weight-to-height ratio. Then I'd build my home in a vault, twenty-five miles below the surface of the Earth, with hydroponic food production (geothermic-powered) a sound-barrier-shattering elevator, bowling alley, shooting gallery, the collected works of Vincent Van Gogh, and GPON fiber optic service. Cuz I'm the king, and the king gets super-fast wifi.

 

After that, I'd probably have to abdicate before something crazy happened. I would already be considered a monster by enough special interest groups to derail any hope of ruling peacefully.

I'd have to buy em off, and that would mean starting down the slippery slope into dystopia.

Just like in Real Life. 

See you in another present.