#9 – The Dystopia Classic – A Reader's History of Science Fiction
Dystopian fiction has become a popular subgenre of sci-fi in its own right, but the earliest dystopian novels shared some unique elements in common, inverting the standard tropes of the hero's journey. In this episode, we explore what has made these stories so enduring. Book recommendation: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. My essay on the inverted hero's journey. Link to the Heroine's journey. Link to O'Brien's speech.
Note: WordPress seems to have a new option for an embedded podcast player, although it still has to be inserted manually. I may continue to tweak the post format once I have a better idea of how it works.
Good stuff! Discovered your podcast through the link at today’s APOD and listened to the three current episodes. Are you aware that Brian Aldiss famously argued for “Frankenstein” as the first SF novel in “Billion Year Spree” (later expanded to “Trillion Year Spree”)? I point that out only because you sounded like it’s an original idea of yours, but maybe that’s just my poor interpretation.
Not my own interpretation. That’s one of the more widely-held views, although I wasn’t aware of Aldiss specifically.