Happy Dystopias

The Future of Another Timeline. Annalee Newitz. 2019.

Let me first say that I enjoyed this book; it was fun and well-executed. There was, however, a very mean but perceptive quote from Kurt Vonnegut of all people that kept going through my head as I read it:

“During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

This novel wanted so badly to be meaningful, when maybe it should have settled for just being fun. Of course the politics can’t be removed; I’ll give Newitz full credit for knowing this, that science fiction might be the most inherently political genre. But the tone of this book was so earnest, so urgent, so sure that if you just listened, if people would just pay attention, maybe something would happen and we could fix the situation we’re all in. All good sci-fi asks questions, obviously. This book wanted to find answers. I see the appeal, especially the appeal to the writer, but I’m not sure it works, either as literature or as activism.

Another option would be to drop the fun and lean into being no fun at all, a move I like to call “the Margaret,” after Atwood’s ability to create visions of the future (and the present) so relentlessly grim that people can’t help but misread them and inject hope where there’s almost none. But that’s hard to do, and even Atwood’s future visions have taken a turn for the crowd-pleasing in the last decade or so. The question, I suppose, it what you want dystopias to be for. And I think a lot of contemporary writers, Newlitz included, are trying for “warning” without letting go of the desire to provide comfort.

Look, literature can comfort you or it can tell you the truth, but it can rarely do both. When I read this book I kept thinking I would have liked it so much more if Newlitz had let it be a downer, or at least ambiguous. People who have been reading along with me so far this year might, at this point, be forgiven for thinking “girl you want everything to be a downer,” and I can see why you might think that. But I truly don’t! I just want my dystopian fiction to be…dystopian, much as I want my horror to be horrific.

I remember when Trump was elected a (much loved) friend told me that their one comfort was that there would be so much good art created out of this era. And you know, I think there probably has been. But there’s been a lot of attempts at art that are…fine, but so obviously torn between Responding To The Terrible Times and Comforting People During the Terrible Times. I’m not sure you can do both at once. I don’t think you can, at once, warn people about how bad things are going to get while also telling people that it’s all going to be okay. Writing that wants to make readers comfortable can't challenge them. It's got all the power of a custard pie dropped from a ladder.

This book is fine. It’s engaging. The plot is well constructed, the characters well developed (though I liked Beth more than Tess). It’s also…too easy. Everything is too easy. The villains are made out of cardboard, and I finished the book not feeling like I was being challenged, but like I was being comforted. 

I liked parts of it - I liked the implication that some of the culture of feminism that we really love (like riot grrl) might belong to a time and place where we needed it; that if the world improves, that culture might disappear. Are we willing to give up all of the things we love that helped us survive patriarchy? It’s an interesting question. I’d have liked the whole book to be about that. Instead I was comforted against my will.