City of Delusion

I believe in my first entry I may have touched on my rediscovering my creative motivation, which has, until recently, been missing in action. Despite my best attempts to recover it from behind enemy lines – that enemy being a joint taskforce of Procrastination and Apathy.

But now its back, and I don’t think merely mentioning it off cuff puts across just how much this renewed vigour for the creative arts has affected me recently. It came back so suddenly over Christmas, that when I wasn’t occupied by regulatory festive frivolities I was hunched over a laptop in the dining room typing away frantically. Since then I have been writing everyday – something I have not done for almost three years. It feels fantastic.

I had forgotten how much enjoyment and energy I take from the process. Even with some, albeit minor, but persist issues that are attempting to shower me in negativity, and being in the grip of a sapping wave of insomnia – I am feeling really good, and my new years resolution/mantra is holding course.

Barely an hour passes when I am not coming up with ideas, reviewing existing ones, or reading something – anything. My mind feels primed to absorb knowledge at the moment, and my curiosity is taking me down so many paths that I am leaning a really diverse collection of subject matter, which can only be a good thing. I am also storming through my backlog of books I have piled up to read, including a few meaty classics and I intend to explore or re-read, foremost of which is a copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World I received for Christmas – along with some advanced reading notes which will be interesting.

For those that may not have had the pleasure – Brave New World (1932) is set in a future Dystopian (or Utopian, depending on your point of view) London. The world is largely united and is known as The World State – This new society has done away with natural reproduction and now Humans are created in state controlled Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, created as and when society requires – and genetically altered to serve, as the society requires. As such, the concept of family is extinct. I have never read it completely, so I will post a more detailed review once I have finished it.

The reason I mention it now, and as the title of this entry may allude to, I am enthralled with Utopian fiction, and more so the concepts it has spawned (namely Dystopia and Anti-Utopia). Many of the ideas I am currently converting into shorts; or attempting to, predominately revolve around themes inspired by societies based on a Utopian or Counter-Utopian model, or individuals within such a society.

What I like about this style, is that the societies created are a response to current social trends and ideals – Projecting them onto a future where governments have unified or have ceded power to global corporations, various sciences and technologies have advanced and now offer a more pleasurable standard of living away from suffering (with the exception of an overtly oppressive Dystopia, which would naturally be the opposite). Perhaps even death has been defeated, or at least, greatly belayed.

It is the concept of an Anti-Utopia that I am most drawn to. An Anti-Utopia is essentially a Dystopia, but differs in that it appears to be, or intended to be, a Utopia. Whereas a Dystopia is an oppressive, violent society, often urbanised and isolated from the natural world – An Anti-Utopia is, perhaps covertly oppressive, whilst allowing its citizens to life a more pleasurable existence. Yet they are trapped, if not to the system itself, to their own inability to be self-reliant.

The ambiguity and uncertainty that is inherent within an Anti Utopia is what makes it stand out for me. From the inside, for the core of its society life would appear to be good. But for those that hold what power the system bestows, or those looking in, the barriers and twisted principles are all too apparent.