What Does The Word “dystopia” Mean?

This is a coinage taken from Thomas More's "Utopia" or no-place. If a Utopia is an ideal, imaginary society, a dystopia is an imaginary society worse than our own (an earlier term was "anti-Utopian.) Typically, dystopias are created by science fiction writers; they usually take a trend or problem in an existing society and exaggerate it, to warn readers of dangers present in their own lives. An early example of dystopian fiction is "We," a novel written by Evgeny Zamyatin in 1921.

This Russian author criticised the new Soviet system in his novel, which imagines a future in which people no longer have names but are known only by initial letters; marriage and other close ties are forbidden. The novel was not published in the USSR, and Zamyatin had to leave soon afterwards. Dystopian fiction often provokes an angry reaction, often (as in Zamyatin's case) from the very authorities it satirises.

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