Eat the Rich and Burn Big Corporations

Some hot takes on dystopian fiction. Blog by Nicole Freewalt

[dystopian-houndoom]

Shots Fired - Guns in Dystopias Response

**Please note that any comments I make about guns and violence in this blog is about gun in FICTITIOUS SCENARIOS. My opinions on this matter have nothing to do with gun legislation in our society and the purpose of this post is not to comment on the politics of guns**

While looking at some other blogs discussing and (over?)analyzing dystopian fiction such as this one, I saw an interesting look at guns as an agent in dystopian novels. Blogger Nick Foley takes a glance at the role of guns in The Hunger Games and Ready Player One. To summarize his post, he saw guns as a necessity for survival while also an efficient means to hunt or kill. The risk and the thrill of the chase isn’t lost on him - he notes that gunfights and fights to the death are rather entertaining like in The Hunger Games. In contrast, Wade from Ready Player One purchases his own gun for safety and even feels reassured with his glock on his person. A gun is, in a way, paradoxical in its purpose - it is a source of comfort and a source of fear and death.

I like where the author is getting at with the paradoxical nature of guns in literature and especially in dystopian fiction. Since survival is a key factor in a lot of these novels, especially The Hunger Games and Ready Player One, guns have the potential to play a major role in novels. Guns are a unique weapon in the fact that they kill efficiently and quickly (if you have the aim, that is). That is simultaneously reassuring for people in possession of guns and terrifying for people on the other side of the barrel. 

And that’s something that I want to focus on in response to Nick’s post - the fact that guns have immense power in dystopian fiction. Guns can be a major indicator of who has power and who definitely doesn’t. Let’s look at one of the photos Nick has featured in his blog:

This picture is the epitome of power the Peacekeepers have. In this snapshot, what I see is a gun symbolizing totalitarian power and the monopolization of power by the Capitol. Citizens of Panem do not have guns or any powerful weapons, but they do have these Peacekeepers overseeing the districts and ‘keeping the peace’ with brute force, or at least the display of force. It is not only a display of power, but also a representation of the oppression the rest of Panem is under. 

In contrast, the gun in Ready Player One is a sign of comfort in terms of safety and financial security. It is when Wade starts to gain wealth from his newfound prestige in the virtual world OASIS that he makes sure that he gets a gun. He already saw how his old home was blown to bits by a company competing for the easter egg in the OASIS. Ignoring how much I loathe this mess of a book, Wade’s gun purchase is actually a good example of the power and security that a gun represents in this scenario. Everyday people with guns in dystopian fiction can indicate a form of prestige and dominance in a heavily competitive world.

If you want to take anything from this post, know that guns in dystopian fiction are symbols of power, comfort, and prestige depending on who owns said weapon and why they’re wielding it.  

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Final Project Proposal

So this isn’t going to be the typical blog entry that you’ve seen from me thus far. This is a more pointed and matter-of-fact project overview for my dystopian fiction class (getting that education even while quarantined, like a true apocalyptic rebel!). 

Unsurprisingly, my project will revolve around the one and only The Hunger Games trilogy. I put some thought into which dystopia I wanted to dive a bit deeper into, and I realized that I’ve done more than my fair share of analyzing and overanalyzing The Hunger Games series throughout the life of this blog. It only makes sense to make a final project about the book with one of my favorite protagonists of all time and a well-created world that is ripe for the taking.

My proposal is somewhat straightforward: I will create pages in a Panem survival guide for the anti-Capitol movement spearheaded by Katniss Everdeen herself. It would just be a few pages with diagrams of some of the muttations the Capitol have created and the mockingjay that arose from the jabberjays. It would be a bit of a history of the Capitol’s means to control the masses as well as entertain Hunger Games viewers. The major muttations I’d want to feature are the mockingjay (duh), the jabberjays, the tracker jackers, and the wolf muttations found in the 74th Hunger Games. There are also some muttations mentioned in the books, so I have the opportunity to not only flex my knowledge of the major muttations but to also create my own muttations that integrate into the dystopian world well. Each diagram would showcase the major modified body parts of each muttation, their strengths and weaknesses, and a numerical score looking at the danger level of an encounter with the muttation. There will also be key notes from known encounters with the muttations, including Katniss’ struggle to fight these animals (because they may be man-made hybrids, but they’re all still animals with the same agency as any other non-modified animal). This project allows me the opportunity to analyze the unique dangers of an advanced totalitarian government while adding a bit of my own creativity to add to the lore. The look at the muttations really attributes to the new materialist view of the world and how muttations are a testament to the need to break down false dichotomies like man versus nature. To survive is to overcome all obstacles, no matter what label they have on them. 

The quality of the drawings will resemble Renaissance-era sketches of anatomical animal drawings, each rife with labels on key body parts and accompanying captions. They’ll look a bit more organized than the examples I’m pulling up, but here are a few layouts I will use for inspiration:

That last example is just so cute! (and I know it’s a replication of the style, although I can imagine DaVinci would love corgis)

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The Environment is a Social Construct(?!)

Okay, looking the semi-satirical title of this entry, I’m sure you have a lot of questions...or none at all at the preposterousness of the statement. All of that is fine and dandy, so allow me to take a few minutes of your time to explain myself in hopes of not looking too much like a crazy PC snowflake using terms willy nilly.

First of all, we’re back at it again looking at dystopian environments with the new materialist look. If you want to look at a more detailed explanation of new materialism, you can check out my previous entry here. Now let’s focus on one of the major ideals of new materialism, and that is the goal to break down the ideas of binaries that many of us have grown to understand. We’ll start with an exercise of the mind (it’s simple, don’t worry). Close your eyes and think of the first thing that comes to mind when you read the word ‘environment.’ What did you see? A natural landscape of some sort? This doesn’t mean that I can read minds or anything - this is something that most people I’ve talked with think of (not to mention ‘natural landscape’ is a pretty broad term). Why do people think of the natural ‘world’ when they think of environment? That’s all thanks to the social construct that society has built to create a binary and divide between humans and human-dominant environments and those with less direct human influence. It further reinforces that idea that areas untouched by human hands are something to be cherished, feared, respected, and/or conquered. Regardless, the main idea is that we generally think, for better or worse, that human-dominated spaces are not environments. New materialism recognizes the construct that we’ve developed and seeks to break all of that down to show everything as they are and how everything, regardless of categories we classify things into, affect one another. Forests are environments just as much as cities are - each contain various elements that affect one another and create an interesting and unique dynamic. New materialism is deeply rooted in ecological theory too - environments are like organisms. Organisms all have different components that make the whole, and each affect one another to balance or disrupt homeostasis within the organism.

That’s enough of my explanation on new materialism - now onto new materialism in dystopian environments. A lot of societies we see today reinforce the constructed binaries: man versus nature, living versus nonliving, alive versus dead, artificial versus natural. However, if we look at successful dystopian novels and other stories with that new materialist view, a lot of those binaries are challenged and even eliminated. Of course, this causes a lot of people to face and even challenge these social constructs and sometimes we can’t quite get ourselves over those ideas we’ve understood for so long. Let’s look at two different examples of successful dystopian novels and how people talk about environments in each.

First, let’s talk about that tried and true book we love to adore and analyze - The Hunger Games. I know, I’m once again talking about Suzanne and Katniss, but I just can’t resist - it’s too good of an example! A major talking point for The Hunger Games is The Hunger Games itself and what takes place in the arena. The arena itself is an environment where there are multiple agents at play, and it is not limited to the man versus nature nor is it the man versus man dichotomy a lot of people think of. And yet, when we talk about The Hunger Games, we talk about individual dichotomies that are factors in the whole. For example, I love gushing about the dynamics between the tributes and their fight against one another for survival. The man versus man dynamic is on full display with other agents taking a backseat and are discussed indirectly to support the main construct of man versus man. Is that the sole dynamic at play that Katniss is affect by? Absolutely not. We can also talk about her fight for survival alone and her reliance on survival skills to find the optimal place to hide and find water and food. We can also talk about her interactions with Haymitch and their back-and-forth communications through sponsored gifts. We can most certainly talk about Katniss and her defiant acts against the Capitol and her fight against the artificially-created dilemmas the Gamemakers cook up. It is SO easy to wedge ourselves into these false dichotomies and ignore the fact that all of these dynamics are intertwined and affect one another. Not to mention the fact that the man versus nature dichotomy doesn’t apply perfectly to the arena - the Gamemakers and the environment they design is affected by both wildlife, man-made components, and hybrids of the two through muttations. What I notice the most in discussions about The Hunger Games is the breakdown of all of these components into digestible constructed dichotomies we are all comfortable with discussing. Hell, look at the promotional work they produced for the movie:

And this last one, which is a fan made poster:

What do all three of these have in common? They seem to focus on one or two of the specific dilemmas Katniss faces. The first looks at Katniss versus a totalitarian entity, the second with a similar but more vague message, and the third looking at Katniss versus some sort of wilderness with a potential interpersonal relationship dilemma. They limit the scope of The Hunger Games to make it palatable and waters down the dynamics actually at play. Of course, you don’t want promotional posters revealing everything before you’ve even seen the damn movie, but you might be slightly misled or surprised at what you get if you went to see the movie based on one of these posters alone. 

Now let’s look at a very different example that is treated similarly. The Road by Cormac McCarthy presents a dismal atmosphere where a father and son duo follow a road south in hopes of finding a place with reliable food sources and free of threatening predators like cannibals and thieves. This dystopian environment, which is in the midst of an apocalypse, shows the complete destruction of society and all of life as we know it. Animals are sparse, buildings and forests are are grey and broken, and human interaction is uncommon but deadly. All of those dichotomies are completely broken down and are only glimpsed at through small tidbits, like the pair finding a lone can of Coke symbolizing a relic of the civilized world. The artistic choice in the movie adaptation to keep colors to a natural palette with little to no variation really adheres to the new materialist look that everything affects one another and categorizing ideas is unnecessary in such a dangerous world. Take a look at some screenshots from the movie:

Not even the Coke can gets a shiny exterior - social constructs really break down when society breaks down along with it. Of course, this is difficult for us to talk about without, one again, breaking down the book into various interactions and dilemmas. The cannibals versus the pair, the climate versus the pair, you name it. However, it’s much more difficult to talk about the book as a whole without talking about all of the individual agents affecting the father and son. In that way, the book was successful in blurring these dichotomies and possibly looking at the protagonists as individual entities and how they work through different agents along the road to hope.

Man, things really took a turn from the environment is a social construct nonsense to the bleak color palette of the 2009 adaptation of The Road. In hopes of ending on a brighter note, I hope everyone is staying safe, eating well, and possibly thinking about new materialism?

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Things Fall Apart: “The Disaster” in Dystopias

*Warning, there are spoilers for the novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood in this post.

One of the major elements of a classic dystopian environment is the apocalypse or ‘disaster’ that serves as the foundation that lays the groundwork for the dystopian world that follows it. Of course, this component on the dystopian world-building checklist is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. There’s no one right way to establish a disaster that leads to the destruction of the world as we know it - it can be one large catastrophic event or an accumulation of several contributing factors that lead to doom and gloom. I know that The Hunger Games comes to mind more times than I’d like to admit, but it’s just such a good example of a good dystopian environment! Collins includes in her trilogy that Panem was created from a laundry list of devastating natural disasters followed by a war to fight for remaining resources (Collins, 2008). Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake has a more straightforward but very impactful explanation that is discovered by the end of the novel: nearly all of humankind died out due to a mega-virus (Atwood, 2003). I’d never be able to finish this post if I were to list all of the different ways you can create the disaster that sets the precedent for the dystopian worlds we love to eat up. Regardless, the disaster is one of the key components of a dystopian environment. Let’s talk about it - but with the lens of new materialism.

For those that are unfamiliar with the idea of new materialism, I’ll give you a quick and dirty look at it. New materialism is a posthumanist theoretical perspective where new materialists look at environments without all of those unnecessary social constructs and dichotomies we’ve grown up with (Bennett, 2010; Sanzo, 2018). What the main aim of new materialism is to break down ideas we’ve harbored and grown up with and blindly accepted. And this is no easy feat - a lot of these ideas are deeply ingrained into our conscience from all different directions. For example, the dichotomy of humans and nature is, from a new materialist, ridiculous. Humans are in fact a part of nature and the ‘nature’ that comes to mind is simply the part of nature and the part of the biosphere that hasn’t been directly affected by man-made construction. The idea that the parts of the environment untouched by humans is sacred, pure, or simply precious not only glorifies what we consider to be nature (because let’s be real, the concrete jungles we walk through are still nature - they just look a bit grayer) but this idea also disregards the value of other objects that are man-made. Man-made objects are also a part of nature - everything is when you think about it. Humans are animals that have found valuable objects to create useful tools. We consider beaver dams to be a part of nature even though they were created by beavers, so why do we think that man-made dams don’t fall under that category too? And so we come to realize that the concept of nature that many people envision is exclusionary of the man-made parts of nature. New materialists like Bennett see these dichotomies, such as “life/matter, human/animal, will/determination, and organic/inorganic” prevent us from understanding material vitality (Bennett, 2010). I know I’ve thrown another term at you that you may be unfamiliar with. Trust me, we’re getting to the disasters we love to discuss but hear me out. The idea of vibrant matter can be addressed without those constructs I’ve mentioned because vibrant matter are objects that have their own separate agency, action, and independence. That can be subatomic particles to works of art. Thus, when we look at the world as a series of interactions between different forces, we can see the world through these interactions (and not focusing on the labels we as humans have established). Because, after all, the disasters precede dystopian environments don’t follow social constructs. Here’s a simple (and artsy fartsy) look at the concept of vibrant matter with Dana Duff to help:

With the idea of new materialism established, let's now look at the disaster found in dystopian environments. For most novels that create a dystopian environment don’t put too much focus on the disaster that caused the mess that the characters have to deal with. That doesn’t mean that the explanation of the disaster is sparse - good novels will give you enough details to allow readers to understand the environment the disaster has created and even force readers to try to imagine the environment they live in and how a similar disaster may affect it. It can be as simple and vague as “Panem was created from a series of natural disasters and war” to something as specific as “I’m still stewing over how I survived the JUVE virus that a close friend of mine deliberately made.” And that’s one of the beauties of the disaster: it sets the stage for the dystopian environment and creates limiting factors to challenge humans and other agents - it’s hard to be more influential than the disaster - but it’s not required to elaborate on the details of the disaster to make the environment successful. Just like I mentioned earlier, the disaster doesn’t adhere to social constructs when it affects the environment. North America was destroyed as a whole, from dogs to river systems, before Panem was formed. There was no “human versus ‘nature’” struggle that went on; war and natural disasters wrecked all of the environment. Even in Oryx and Crake’s world the virus designed to wipe out the human race has repercussions that affect more than just humans. Humans tend to be active agents that affect other matter, so the absence of impactful matter like humans has a lasting effect on matter that was formerly manipulated and altered by humans. Ultimately, the disaster can take many forms, but its scope of influence goes far beyond destroying a socially constructed society - it destroys environments.

Works Cited:

Atwood,M. (2003). Oryx And Crake : a Novel. New York: Nan A. Talese

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter : a Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.

Collins, S. (2008). The Hunger Games. London: Scholastic.

Sanzo K. New Materialism(s). Critical Posthumanism Network. 2018 Apr 25 [accessed 2020 Feb 28]. https://criticalposthumanism.net/new-materialisms/

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Fixed this up a bit.

(btw, the man in the sand is supposed to be Plutarch, I know it may not be easy to tell right away)

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Environmental and Cultural Hegemony in The Hunger Games

Okay, I know the title has a lot going on, but hear me out. Today’s post will revolve around the Capitol and how they use environmental and cultural control, or hegemony, to dehumanize and oppress the rest of Panem. Hegemony is more than just simple control in a certain aspect of life - it’s a monopoly of resources and restriction of access. For example, the Capitol’s cultural hegemony of Panem is found in many aspects of the trilogy. The Capitol censors a lot of oppression in each district, they control the type of identity each district displays to the rest of Panem, they limit interaction between districts, and they are the sole distributors of media and entertainment. And these are only a small handful of examples of how the Capitol maintains cultural hegemony. My favorite example of the Capitol’s cultural hegemony (I know it sounds weird to have a favorite example of oppression...it’s from a perspective of appreciation of clever parallels between Panem and media in the real world) is in the first book, The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008). We all know the iconic three-fingered send-off District 12 gives to Katniss in response to her sacrifice for her sister and we all know the solemn goodbye and solidarity tethered to this simple gesture. The Capitol knows all of this too, so while they do have this scene broadcasted to the rest of Panem, they make a concerted effort to belittle and crush the cultural significance of the act by responding with comments on how quaint and unique local traditions are. They simply chalk up the whole ordeal to being a cultural tradition rather than an act of solidarity for District 12 and dissent against the Capitol.

And you better believe that Collins had every intention to display the intense cultural control the Capitol has on the rest of Panem; after all, there is a parallel between the Capitol’s cultural hegemony and the cultural hegemony found in totalitarian governments. It’s also fair to point out that even in democratic societies (let’s be real, I’m mainly talking about the United States) that there is evidence that some governments and especially large (possibly monolopic) corporations are seeking out cultural hegemony. Sean Connors, who wrote specifically on the politics of Panem, looked to McDonald’s work in 2012 that states that dystopian authors focus on a “negative cultural trend and imagine a future or an alternative world in which that trend dominates every aspect of life” (Connors, 2014). I’ve seen a lot of political cartoons that reflect similar sentiments found in The Hunger Games trilogy. All you need to do is just edit the captions a bit - and viola! - you’ve got a forbidden Panem political cartoon. Here’s the original - and it’s pretty straight to the point. The original cartoon is basically saying ‘we’re just consuming whatever the media feeds us.’

Yeah, a simple statement. I couldn’t find the original source for the life of me, but I did cite where I found it (Dutkiewicz, 2019). If we want to see that “Capitol-ified,” just change the labels:

So I did also edit the figure in the chair a bit, but same general idea with the hegemonic power, the Capitol, feeding the rest of Panem with practically all of the information they get from the media. 

Of course, cultural hegemony is not the only monopoly that the Capitol has on the rest of Panem. One of the more obvious hegemonies the Capitol has on the rest of Panem is environmental hegemony. It’s a simple enough concept, but it goes beyond just hoarding resources - it’s also a form of patriarchal dominance in a sense. Ecofeminists (yes, this is a real concept) see that many people see the parallels between the patriarchal dominance of men over women and the patriarchal dominance of humans over nature. Connors references McAndrew’s assertion that many people (and corporations) view the “natural world as something to be mastered or even conquered,” which aligns under “the dominance theme of patriarchy” (Connors, 2014). You can also see that, because the Capitol labels each district based on the resource they provide to the Capitol, there is a very (not-so-unfamiliar) colonizer-colonized relationship at play (Connors, 2014). And Collins is not subtle at all with this idea - just look at District 11 and how the predominantly black population there provides crops for the Capitol. You might as well call that whole district a big plantation. The Capitol uses their technology and power to control and monitor not only the districts but also the artificial environments constructed for the Hunger Games. Not just using Peacekeepers to make sure each district provides their fair share of resources, but also manipulating and ‘conquering’ nature to use it to their own benefit in the form of tracker jackers, jabberjays, other muttations. Just by looking at the environmental hegemony you can see this form of objectification of members of each district, further playing into this connection between feminism and environmentalism many emphasize today (Bland and Strotmann, 2014). And ecofeminists aren’t just seeing examples in fictitious dystopian novels - look at how major corporations are treating indigenous lands. Look at the destruction of the Amazon forest - the corporations’ entitlement to these resources even though their headquarters are thousands of miles away. Look at the heads turned away from the indigenous tribes that are dying and losing land from big tycoons like McDonald’s. There is environmental exploitation that certainly makes ecofeminism a logical response (as odd as the hybrid name may sound).

And those ecofeminists are not simply sitting idly and pointing out the errors of modern society. Dr. Vandana Shiva is a big name in ecofeminism and has her own TED Talk discussing the solutions to major issues using the ecofeminist perspective (and you know you’ve made it if you have a TED Talk). She also has an interesting perspective since she grew up in India and looks at solutions that revolve around taking care of the environment. But don’t just take it from me, hear what she has to say yourself:

I think that’s enough rambling from my part. Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more…

Works Cited:

Bland, J., Strotmann, A. The Hunger Games: An Ecocritical Reading. Children's Literature in English Language Education, vol. 2, no. 1, 2014, pp. 22-43.

Collins, S. (2008). The Hunger Games. London: Scholastic.

Connors, S. P. (2014). The Politics of Panem: Challenging Genres. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

Dutkiewicz, P. (2019, September 27). Where does world hegemony lie? Retrieved from https://risingnepaldaily.com/detour/where-does-world-hegemony-lie

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A good boy

Inspiration

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the government creating the purge: citizens can have a little anarchy, as a treat

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teen dystopian novel where this time the world is in shambles because the two guys in love with the girl rose to power as dictators to impress her and now they’re fighting over her by destroying each other’s nations

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You CAN have cliches for the end of the world…

You know it, you love to see it, you eat it up. Yep, those wonderful ‘post-apocalyptic’/’dystopian’/’science fiction’/’end-of-the-world’ novels. It’s the whole reason I have this blog in the first place (I mean, not discussing the class that I have associated with this blog and the prompts I need to submit here…) Regardless, what is this new phenomenon that’s emerged in the post-modern world and what makes them so damn addictive?

First, let’s take a look at what can be considered a ‘dystopia.’ According to Dictionary.com, a dystopia is “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” To me, this seems to be a bit too specific to encompass what can be considered a dystopia. For a dystopia to be a dystopia, I do agree that there must be some form of human misery, but this form of misery may take several forms. Usually, there’s a fight for survival that contributes to this misery in addition to other conflicts. These sources of misery may look like governmental oppression, nuclear warfare or war in general, disease, mass extinction, overcrowding, and manipulation or brainwashing. In fact, a dystopia may not even seem to be a dystopia according to those in these dire situations. A good example of this is a nice animated short film titled “Model Citizen,” where civilians are a part of what the oppressive power considers a perfect society:

In a way, one may say this society is indeed perfect, but those living under this power is limited to what we consider a mundane, boring, and controlled life that is void of true adventure and excitement. So, because we see that there is a form of heavy oppression and control, this animated short’s society that it constructed is an example of a dystopian society.

In addition, dystopian novels are capable of being much more than a simple dystopian society worldbuild. There are more nuances and genres that can be incorporated into a successful dystopian novel. There may be elements of science fiction as foundation for an apocalyptic event, something that can be found in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Many novels also look into post-apocalyptic scenarios in which a dystopian world emerges from a broken society that may have resembled the one we see today. One genre hybrid that is also very popular is the young adult (YA) dystopian fiction. There are several YA novels that capitalize on this niche mix of genres, and it is indeed profitable, or at least was...It seems that a lot of sales for YA dystopian novels have dropped within the last year or so, and I believe that can be contributed towards the repetitiveness of these novels (Flood, 2019). There’s this mentality of ‘you’ve read one YA dystopia, you’ve read them all.’ Take a look at this video, which pinpoints 7 different tropes that she has noticed through many dystopian novels, but she exclusively references YA dystopian novels that follow these tropes. How often do you see these tropes in your YA dystopias?

Back to the subject of popularity of dystopian novels as a whole. All you need to look at to really see the dystopia craze is through sales. Classic dystopian novels like George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World are hitting the bestseller lists once again (Tam, 2017; Wheeler, 2017). Some sources say that this rise in sales may be associated with the Trump administration; dystopian novel fans have been quick to note parallels between the actions of the current administration and those of totalitarian figureheads that oppress the protagonists featured in these novels. 

And yet, there’s a cathartic and escapist element to reading these books. I, like many others, get transported to different worlds and engulf myself in a new world. Some people accredit this to the fact that many dystopian novels are a fresh start. Those that have a post-apocalyptic element may involve a restart on society - a society that is more inclusive than the one we currently live in (Finke, 2014). These restarts may especially involve more LGBT-friendly and diverse societies, issues that are still exhaustingly prevalent across the world.

The takeaway from this post? Dystopian novels are interesting reads that reflect current concerns, but can also be a source of hope for a better future, regardless of how that better future is achieved.

Works Cited:

Finke, C. Z. (2014, July 12). Why Do We Love Apocalyptic Movies? The Two Basic Rules That Make Them So Addictive. Retrieved from https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2014/07/12/why-we-love-stories-about-mass-destruction/

Flood, A. (2019, February 27). Authors voice alarm after sharp drop in sales of YA fiction. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/27/authors-voice-alarm-after-sharp-drop-in-sales-of-ya-fiction

Tam, A. (2017, March 10). Dystopian Fiction Is Selling Like There's No Tomorrow. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/dystopian-fiction-selling-there-s-no-tomorrow-n731846

Wheeler, B. (2017, January 29). The Trump era's top-selling dystopian novels. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38764041

Dictionary.com definition of dystopia