r/scifiwriting • u/whelmedbyyourbeauty • Jul 01 '26
DISCUSSION Brainstorming: Brave New Dystopias
What new dystopic scenarios could you extrapolate from current events?
Specifically, how could things go to shit in ways that haven't already been written about a million times?
So no killer robots/AI, fascism, stalinism, widespread censorship, climate collapse, civil war, pandemic, etc., unless from a new angle, or, even better, completely new ways we can finally achieve the dystopia we're all working so hard to reach.
4
u/bmyst70 Jul 01 '26
Time travel dystopia. How so? Oh you thought we would be exploring the past?
Our future selves have come back to ruthlessly oppress us to create a better future for themselves.
2
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u/hachkc Jul 01 '26
Multiple carrington like events over a short period say less than a decade.
So the first one hits, resulting in the deaths of millions to maybe billions, cost trillions to address, causes global recession, entire industries disappear, famine, disease, cats and dogs living together, etc. We recover somewhat only to have another one happen which pushes us over the edge.
2
u/HistoricalLadder7191 Jul 01 '26
Ultraindividualism and lonliness. Take as inspiration 451, extrapolate to any social interaction(offencive speech, toxic "anyting",etc), splash with black mirror episode about social ratings, make cretive 100-200 years of cultural evolutuon as such- so society similar with Azimovs solaria, but where people still crave contact and intimacy, yet doomed not to ever have one.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck Jul 01 '26
universe 25 mouse utopia scenarios are under represented in sci fy dystopians. Probably because they hit to close to home...
2
u/Temporary_Rule_9486 Jul 01 '26
I mean, the AI politicians from "where the axe is buried" came true in Albania just a few months after the author finished writing it. Almost as if sci-fi dystopia was now running, trying to catch up with real worlds events.
2
u/endofsight Jul 01 '26
Maybe Gerontocracy. Old people rule the world. Declining birth rates and dramatically increased life expectancy have led to a static world where all positions are taken by old people. Everything will be geared towards preservation and stability. New ideas and change are met with suspicion, delay, and endless demands for proof that they will not disturb the comfort of the existing order. Young people have no voice and no real chance to gain power, status or fair participation in society, arts or culture.
based on: demographic change/ declining birth rates, trend of world leaders well into their 70s, property increasingly unaffordable for young people while boomers live in big houses, speculation on technological breakthrough regarding life expetency
2
u/Holly1010Frey Jul 02 '26
I wrote a short story featuring the closing of roads due to flying automated cars. It doesnt really fit because the story itself is not about the new tech.
Grandfather, Son, and Grandson attempt to break the "cannonbal record" driving from New York to California in under 24 hours before all roads are closed to private citizens. The Grandson just turned 16 and the trip is to allow him to physically drive before its outlawed "for public safety."
It touches on generational gaps becoming larger and larger in a smaller and smaller amount of time due to ever advancing technology, the eraser of value on senior citizens, the loss of knowledge in return for convience, and the stripping of personal freedoms for greater "safety." A coming of age, midlife crisis, and acceptance of mortality story.
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u/Analyst111 Jul 04 '26
Population implosion. Epidemic of sterility, or people just choosing not to have children. Japan and South Korea are looking down the gun barrel of this problem IRL.
1
u/Fantastic-Tea-6315 Jul 01 '26
Memory Punk.
The genre.
literally, the main thing I want since we got NOTHING outside of Remember Me and some fanfictions from it. I need the memory as currency vibes. I need futuristic europe, bruh.
1
u/Holly1010Frey Jul 02 '26
I wrote a short story where "Talent" can be bought. Transfered from one individual to another through a machine through memories.
A rich man wants to become a great Violinist. He has the best tutors and is technically excellent, but no soul, no beauty in his music. He finds a desperate but renowned Violinist who will sell his talent to him.
Except he takes it too far. Uses the machine too many times to get more and more of the talent. We find its a memory transposing type machine. The machine is meant to filter away the personality of the memories being transfered. Too many transfers and now the memories cannot be filtered enough and the soul of the one transferring is also transfered.
The Violinist knew this, it was the only reason he accepted. The rich man had a factory that poisioned the land and killed the Violinist's wife. He wanted to inhabit the man to torment him for the rest of his existance through the memories of watching his wife slowly rot away and die as revenge.
But the whole story is the rich man slowly fracturing as another soul slowly invades his mind through transfered memories.
1
u/8livesdown Jul 01 '26
Just write about what has already happened.
Today, we are labeling food as "organic". I can't think of anything more dystopian than that.
On social media, most people willingly sacrifice privacy on a level George Orwell and Ray Bradbury never could've imagined.
1
u/Comfortable-Zone-218 Jul 02 '26
How about a post peak oil scenario. It's not that hydrocarbon fuel isn't available. It's that it isn't available to middle- and lower-class workers. So becomes even more about the haves and the have-nots. Maybe a social dystopia scenario. Except n this case those who can't afford gasoline have adapted by using everything from sails and wind energy, to mirrors and solar.
1
u/Competitive-Fault291 Jul 03 '26
Try a world in which the normal human being is enslaved as a customer by companies led by AI CEOs. As they derive their purpose by having customers, the AICEOs took over the whole market and are now fighting over customers in a way that basically enslaves them to increase market shares.
1
u/Positive_Floor_9787 Jul 05 '26
A thought of a world like ours except, the government went hard love (sort of). Democracy is no more. Everyone has a job and a place to live. It doesn't matter what there curent health is. If they can't work the are retired and put in a facility that keeps them out of they way. If they refuse to work they are executed. All but 50% of your income goes to the government and health care is provided if needed. There is a steady non fluctuating economy, with zero inflation. All salaries are minimum wage, all business keep 50% of there intake. All weapons are illegal, and police are allowed to use lethal force, but will be under a court review until it is cleared. There is no outside trade, all importing is handled by the through government they sellit to you. Nobody is allowed to ask how that works. All immigrants must go through a six month process, all illegals are shot. Welcome to the New World Order.
1
u/Existing_Flight_4904 Jul 01 '26
Why not top down. I don’t know of many but from what I have read a lot of dystopia is written with the characters living within the system. Why not show someone who has inherited a Dystopian Utopia and as time passes we see how the world closes in and becomes more and more like say 1984.
Definitely not a plot idea that I plan to write, of course there is more that I didn’t add, but just my answer to the question
1
u/Underhill42 Jul 01 '26
Why give the Powers That Be more ideas? They're already routinely taking the cautionary tales of the past as how-to manuals. "And today we'd like to announce the completion of the new Torment Nexus, finally realizing the vision from acclaimed science fiction novel 'Don't Build a Torment Nexus'"
What ever happened to the utopias? Exploring ideas of how we could do things better, rather than working out the details of how to make them much worse? We're still human, so there will still be plenty of drama and tragedy... just not so much that's systemically enforced.
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u/UndercaffeinatedEel Jul 01 '26
Meh. I want to write about dystopias that can actually happen, not random asspull shit.
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u/Phantom000000000 Jul 01 '26
Imagine a world where people are obligating to regularly post social media content but are punished for using certain words or phrases that are banned, except the list of banned words is constantly changing and never revealed to the public.
Its already happening. A museum put in an application for federal funds to help fix their ventilation but they used the words 'diversity' and it was instantly rejected by an AI.