1. Dystopian Post-Apocalypse Fiction
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell, 1984

3. General Background
A utopia is an ideal society. A dystopia is the exact opposite.
A dystopian world is a miserable reality filled with oppression, fear, despair, and sometimes written in a post-apocalyptic setting.
Dystopian authors warn their readers of a world in which the government or some other entity (corporate, industrial) is in control, and the people are not allowed to think, learn or express emotions.

5. Setting
Dystopian fiction generally takes place in a future society with links and flashbacks to earlier times in order to contrast contemporary values with those of the dystopia.
Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster that ruins the world. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in a non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain.

6. Characters
The main protagonists in dystopian fiction are human beings who either have learned to adapt to the new rules that govern a new futuristic world and/or the end of modern civilization or who have not learned to adapt because either the future and/or apocalypse was too recent or because they hold on to values of civilization before the change.
Often, the protagonist is an anti-hero who continually is pressured to sacrifice virtues that people in contemporary society take for granted. These antiheroes tend to compromise many values in order to hold on to only a few—often relationships that they view as sacred. In many ways, apocalypse fiction and dystopian fiction are like the postmodern character who attempts to escape the fictional world becoming self-aware of our own constructed cultural codes.

7. Characters Cont.
Nothing shows our cultural norms to be more constructed than forcing humanity into a survival situation and removing those institutions who are the guardians of the ideals and values of contemporary culture.
In dystopian fiction, the protagonists also retain the values of our current society (or the contemporary society in which it was written) while the other members of society are following a well-intentioned “utopian” vision that has become an oppressive force toward the values we hold in our society.
Often, the new ‘utopia’ is more rationally and logically organized and rejects the irrational and epistemology of Romanticism (desire, emotion, imagination) and so is a throwback to Romantic fiction of the 19th Century. Only in the dystopian fiction, nature does not punish those attempting to restrain internal and external nature.

8. All good things start first with the written word…
Plot
Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road.
Contemporary apocalypse or dystopian fiction borrows heavily from the conventions of plot- based fiction of the early to mid 20th Century.
Battles with aliens, zombies, or machines often takes a back seat to more mundane plots that celebrate the beauty and wonder of the simplest elements of our culture—falling in love, jealousy, friendship, etc.
Of course, a rise in power dealing with the external pressures is a fascinating backdrop and the fiction goes back and forth from the human relationships and the external conflicts to keep us interested and to remind us of the situation that serves as a backdrop to the human stories playing out in the middle of apocalypse.
See any parallels
here?
All good things start first with the written word…
Even video games
The Walking Dead

9. Structural Features
Although earlier genre-fiction versions of apocalypse fiction were skeletal and plot-centered, more recent attempts at the genre are highly figurative with symbolic archetypal characters and round dynamic protagonists who usually either begin or end as anti-heroes.
Heavy use of flashbacks and even multiple perspectives serve as a contrast to the ‘present’ situation in the story.
Often, just as in Magic Realism, the supernatural events only spark more interesting dynamics in the relationships between the characters rather than being the main point or focus.
A love story has been done before, for example; however, a love story after the planet has been taken over by the machines is a novelty.

10. Themes/Topics/Motifs
The major themes in apocalypse fiction focus on the simplest of human pleasures such as love, family, and friendship in the relationship category and safety, convenience, and structure provided by institutions and civilization in the survival category.
For dystopian fiction, the themes are usually more political in nature exploring the dangers of universal truths (central hierarchies).
The dystopia is created using a noble set of goals that are generally socialist in nature.
Often, the dystopias mirror the rise of Fascism prior to WWII—a government that pretends to be socialist in order to motivate people to give up a sense of individual and civil rights while a select few reap the rewards of everyone else’s sacrifice and live like emperors.

11. Themes/Topics/Motifs Cont.
Shh…SF as Literature
session in progress…
Other topics associated with dystopian fiction include:
1) Censorship: The government or governing body will limit or restrict information to control the people. They will limit television, music, literature, entertainment, news, etc.
2) Propaganda: The media is used to create an image, positive or negative, to persuade the society into believing calculated information.
3) Surveillance: The government or governing body will use technology, such as recording devices and cameras, to watch the population.
Note: If you like exploring these issues, make sure to sign up for Science Fiction as Literature next year with either Mr. Crean or Mr. Fuentes.

12. Themes/Topics/Motifs Cont.
4) Totalitarian Style of Government: The government or governing body typically follows a dictatorship or totalitarian format, making sure that they have control over the people's public and private lives.
5) Idol: There is a person (figurehead) or concept that the people pledge their allegiance to and or worship as a deity.

13. Themes/Topics/Motifs Cont.
6) Conformity: Individualism is abolished at all costs to maintain order and control. Those who do not conform are typically punished.
7) Dehumanization: The society will attempt to break down the people by removing the need for emotional connections and replacing them with something else, such as a task, job, medication, etc.
8) Illusion: The government or governing body will create the illusion that the society is living in a utopia. They will paint a picture of beauty and happiness for the people, pushing away the outside world.

15. Variations
Variations (typical/atypical): Apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of human civilization. This apocalypse is typically portrayed as being due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as zombie apocalypse, nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural phenomena, divine judgment, runaway climate change, resource depletion, ecological collapse, or some other general disasters. Dystopian fiction is more centered on the dangers of current practices followed to either logical or far-fetched (slippery slope) conclusions of forming a new society. Technology usually has a major role in the dangers of our current society.