10 Things I Learned From Dystopian Novels

Insights from fiction’s darkest worlds

I’ve been on a dystopian novel kick. I love a good story about how it all goes to hell in a hand basket.

I’ve read feminist critiques like The Handmaid’s Tale and The School for Good Mothers and and tales of billionaire hideaways like The Land of Milk and Honey and The Future and narratives of pandemic recovery like Severance and Station Eleven.

Here are 10 learnings from those books:

1. Cities = no bueno for survival. Get out, ideally to a place with less humans where you can live off the land.
2. You won’t have time to react. In all these books, there is one lukewarm warning sign, like a credit card being declined in The Handmaid’s Tale or an actor collapsing on stage in Station Eleven, then it’s an immediate onset crisis, usually in a matter of days.
3. The easiest way to create a dystopia is to take what’s already happening in the world and put it on steroids. The School for Good Mothers imagines a Child Protective Services on steroids. The Future imagines a world in which the most powerful leaders trust AI over other humans and even their own instincts.
4. All of these books start with an assumption that existing trends, from falling birth rates to warming climates, continue.
5. Survival is easier in a group, but trust within the group is everything.
6. Billionaires have prepared for this. They’ve built seed banks and microclimates and food stores to ensure their protection. It usually backfires.
7. People are expected to settle for robots as a source of connection. It doesn’t work.
8. Forces in power require defectors from the out-group to oppress the out-group. All it takes is a little bit of money, status, or good food.
9. The survivors question if they want to survive.
10. Within 3–5 years, a new normal emerges. Within 1–2 generations, justice is served.

Finding meaning in chaos

The heroes of these dystopian novels who persevere through the chaos and upheaval to find meaning and purpose in the new normal remind me of Viktor Frankl’s profound insights in Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, recounted how even in the horrific conditions of Nazi concentration camps, those who maintained a sense of purpose and assigned meaning to their suffering were better able to endure.

In the bleak, dehumanizing worlds depicted in these novels, the characters who survive are often those who cling to their values, loyalties, and an unwavering belief that human dignity will ultimately prevail. Like Frankl and his fellow prisoners, they derive strength not from their circumstances, but from their spirits, relationships, and the meaning they choose to find in their struggles.

Whether fighting against authoritarian regimes, environmental catastrophes, or the erosion of individual freedoms, the enduring heroes understand that true resistance lies in the refusal to surrender one’s humanity and moral compass. Their stories remind us that even in the darkest of times, we have the power to shape our own narratives and imbue our experiences with purpose.

Obviously, I hope no one, myself very much included, has to live through the dystopian futures outlined in any of these books, but I find the themes of bias towards action, loyalty, trust, and meaning relevant in today’s world and a reminder of what makes us human.