Dystopian fun, sound like an oxymoron, a contradiction in
terms. Dystopian fiction takes place in the future (usually) where things are
not going well, where there is hardship and suffering. Examples include the
novel 1984 by George Orwell, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony
Burgess, Make Room, Make Room by Harry Harrison, The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins. Or instead of being set in the future, it can be set in an
alternate history like Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Dystopia
is the opposite of utopia. In short, it does not sound like a fun place to be,
right?
But I recently read a novella by Charlie Jane Anders called
“Rock Manning Goes for Broke.” It’s a hoot. It takes place in a near future
where the government and militias are sort of competing to see who can be worse.
Yet the Novella has more in common with silent movie comedies than it does with
1984. The protagonist, Rock manning, is a young man who seems to be a
modern Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton. He doesn’t seem to mind crashing, falling,
being run into or hit over the head. If there was entertainment in it, he was
willing to go through it. In school, bullies found that it was pointless to
beat him up because he would mess himself up faster than they could keep up
with.
He meets a girl named Sally and they become best friends.
They do art together. Their art consists of films, usually involving something
like Rock Manning riding on a broken bicycle that is on fire while going over a
cliff, or some such. Rock seems indestructible in a cartoon sort of way. The
world around them continues to get darker with war, government lies, conspiracy
theories that fuel repression, and the breakdown of society. Still Rock and
Sally continue making their films. They are not oblivious to what is going on,
but to them, it is even more reason for them to pursue their art. Comic
disasters are their defense against what is increasingly becoming a train crash
of a world they live in. When Rock is questioning his worth and worrying about
the danger he is putting other people in, Sally tells him, “You are good for
exactly one thing and one thing only, and that’s turning people’s brains off
for a few minutes. You should stick to that.”
This story was in a collection by Charlie Jane Anders called
Even Greater Mistakes. This might not be the most important story in the
collection, but for me, it was the most fun. (There are plenty of other good
stories in the collection and I recommend it as a whole.)
Dystopian fun. Could be a whole new genre.
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