The Book of the Future

By Grant Snider, Via: Tattered Cover

The Resurgence of the Dystopian Novel: But Now it is for Teens

This infographic from Goodreads explores the resurgence of dystopian fiction and its shift to teen audiences. (Click twice for a good look.) Is this shift because George Orwell and Aldus Huxley weren’t really writing for teens? Or is there something particular about today’s teens’ future-vision that the dystopian novel has particular current appeal?

Eighty years ago, when Aldus Huxley wrote Brave New World, teenagers probably assumed their adult lives would be fairly similar to that of their parents, if they thought of the future in those terms at all. Teenagers now know that change comes so quickly that their future is unpredictable. Dystopian fiction explores possibilities often with a warning to citizens who blithely allow corruption to spread and eventually destroy.

Are teens learning? Are they motivated and empowered to prevent Orwellian or Westerfieldian societies from developing? Or are they fatalistic, with a live-for-today, live-it-up-cuz-the-future-will-suck attitudes. I hope it’s the former.

In the SLJ post,  Adventures in Dystopia, Marc Aronson observes, “The new has changed from a dream to a product — a product who [sic] shelf life is only as long as the next production cycle.” From the perspective of learning from the past, even the recent past, he writes,

” In some way we are so disconnected from history that the action, however reflective of our present, must be cast ahead. We don’t expect the past to tell us anything. The real is the imagined…”

Ted Alverez from Grist braved The Hunger Games premier to find out if, “…the dystopian appeal of the books and now movies draws strength from the young’uns’ acceptance of the climate-disaster-addled hellhole they are destined to inherit.” His results were interesting and entertaining, but inconclusive.

What are you seeing? Are the teens at your school or in your family thinking ahead with a global perspective?

Related articles

• Best Dystsopian Books for Teens (goodreads.com)
• Young Adult Dystopian Books (prettybooks.tumblr.com)
• Hunger Games and Teenage Angst in the New Yorker (thefinchandpea.com)
• Read Aldous Huxley’s review of 1984 he sent to George Orwell [Futurism] (io9.com)

Ludite or Sage? Jonathan Franzen warns ebooks are corroding values

Jonathan Franzen at the Cartagena festival: 'All the real things are dying off.' Photograph: Stringer/Colombia/Reuters

For serious readers, Franzen said, “a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience”. “Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change,” he continued. “Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

Read the rest of the article at The Guardian

Via Library Link of the Day

Envisioning the Future of Technology

Domestic robots by 2026, (just in time for me to really need them), and skin-embedded computer screens by 2030. Michell Zappa of  Envisioning Technology has created this visualization to show his predictions of technological milestones through the next 28 years.

Click the image and then click it again to explore the future.

Via The Long Now Foundation blog

Powering Down to Future Shock?

Image Credit: the generous HikingArtist.com

In ” The Future of Books: A Dystopian Timeline”, John Biggs claims that by “2025…The book is, at best, an artifact and at worst a nuisance. Book collections won’t disappear – hold-outs will exist and a subset of readers will still print books – but generally all publishing will exist digitally.”

He writes “a little bit sci-fi” chronologizing the demise of the printed word. It’s a little bit scary and a large bit fascinating. I am no ludite: the cash flow challenge is the only thing that keeps me (and my library) from all the latest technology, but perhaps it was that Mr. Biggs used the terms dystopian and sci-fi that reading his list immediately made me think about possible futures.

I’m not expecting any apocalypse, but I am wondering why I am busting my butt restructuring my library when it will be completely passé before the new shelving wears out. And I have to ask the question: what if, in 2125 the lights go out? Current resources generating all the power we use to fuel the big techno machine are finite. Will we find a sustainable way to keep the servers humming and the batteries charged? Or will one hundred years of recorded history, thoughts and feelings simply disappear into the ether?

Related articles

• The Future Of Books: A Dystopian Timeline (techcrunch.com)