FMK#29: Political Satires and Dystopias

[melannen]

Han of Iceland is due back to the library in a week and I can't renew it anymore. :/ I'm just over 1/3 of the way through. Four chapters ago, Hans snuck up on Spaguidry and did something offscreen that involved a lot of screaming, but meanwhile we've had many pages of Ethel's dad failing to recognize that the person he is talking to is also the person he is talking about (not even any disguises required! he just wouldn't stop talking long enough to allow an introduction, and by the time he did, it was just awkward), some revolutionaries conspiring over a bonfire, and many many pages of Ordener mooning over the distant light in Ethel's window.

I have hopes for onscreen violence before much longer, though.

Last week's F winner was Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell, and K was Better to beg forgiveness.... In other good news, I went through the boxes of fmk-eligible books as part of my "clean everything" project, and thanks to ya'll, we have gone from six boxes + a small shelf + overflow to no more overflow! \o/ (And so far, all the fmk keepers have managed to fit into existing space on the keeper shelves.)

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

This week's theme: It's Halloween, so let's do something proper scary: OUR INEVITABLE SLIDE INTO DYSTOPIA

Poll #19011 FMK #29: Political Satires and Dystopias

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

Utopia by St. Thomas More (1553)

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F
14 (56.0%)

M
7 (28.0%)

K
4 (16.0%)

Erewhon by Samuel Butler (1872)

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F
10 (52.6%)

M
6 (31.6%)

K
3 (15.8%)

Comrades, a story of social adventure in California by Thomas Dixon (1909)

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F
9 (60.0%)

M
1 (6.7%)

K
5 (33.3%)

We by Evgenii Zamyatin (1921)

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F
9 (50.0%)

M
8 (44.4%)

K
1 (5.6%)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

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F
20 (55.6%)

M
8 (22.2%)

K
8 (22.2%)

Zotz! by Walter Karig (1947)

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F
5 (45.5%)

M
2 (18.2%)

K
4 (36.4%)

Search the Sky by Pohl and Kornbluth (1954)

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F
10 (66.7%)

M
1 (6.7%)

K
4 (26.7%)

The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley (1955)

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F
18 (75.0%)

M
3 (12.5%)

K
3 (12.5%)

The Revolt of Gunner Asch by Helmut Kirst (1956)

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F
7 (50.0%)

M
1 (7.1%)

K
6 (42.9%)

The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck (1957)

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F
8 (53.3%)

M
1 (6.7%)

K
6 (40.0%)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

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F
14 (50.0%)

M
5 (17.9%)

K
9 (32.1%)

Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb by Peter George (1964)

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F
22 (84.6%)

M
2 (7.7%)

K
2 (7.7%)

Alph by Charles Maine (1973)

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F
0 (0.0%)

M
1 (8.3%)

K
11 (91.7%)

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (2010)

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F
11 (42.3%)

M
1 (3.8%)

K
14 (53.8%)

Comments

[thawrecka]

I enjoyed the hell out of Brave New World when I read it in high school, but that was at least 17 years ago, probably closer to 20, so who knows if it stands up to cynical adult tastes.

[ambyr]

Coincidentally, I pulled a very fancy copy of Utopia out of a little free library yesterday. Now I want to know if it's worth reading.

[the_rck]

Alph was pretty thoroughly terrible. I can't recommend it at all. I read all of it in high school because I was out of SF/fantasy that the library had that actually looked good. As I recall, there were no likeable characters, and the world building was not... Um. Even as a teen, I didn't think that a society consisting entirely of women would necessarily work that way.

More's Utopia was really tedious. I read that in college for a class. It's an interesting artifact, but it's no fun at all unless you're looking at it from that angle.

I'm not certain that Mockingjay will make any sense without the rest of the trilogy. I haven't read the series (my daughter has), but my understanding is that things are very tightly plotted.

I'm fond of The Mouse that Roared, but I don't know if it will have aged even remotely well. It's very absurd. The movie is fun.

[alexseanchai]

Re Mockingjay: F Hunger Games first. If you like it, go on to Catching Fire. Then Mockingjay.

[sheliak]

I adored The Mouse that Roared as a kid/teen, and quite liked most of the sequels. Particularly the space race one. It's been about a decade since I read any of them, though.

I've still got my copies; I should probably dig them out and see if they hold up.

[lannamichaels]

I loved Brave New World when I read in high school and reread it several times, and I hate the ending and all, but I think at least the beginning parts is pretty cool and very creepy.

I've never read the Strangelove book, but the movie's good, so it's probably fuckable? Since the rule of thumb is that the books are often better than movies.

Kill the hunger games, because I have opinions on a book series I've never read but that has spawned many crossovers and fusions and so I've unexpectedly had, like, body medical horror that I hadn't known was in the series through pop-culture-osmosis come at me in fic, and has led me to modifying my yuletide letter do not wants for the first time in years, and I hold a serious grudge. :P

[rushthatspeaks]

The prose of A Clockwork Orange is just fucking magnificent. One of the best extrapolations of slang into a future setting ever made. The language is, however, basically the thing that's there-- it's a great thing, but it's all there is. Oh, and sexual violence, of course.

We may be the greatest dystopia ever written, and I wish later books had taken more notice of it. It has still never been published in the original Russian.