Dystopian Books Ignite Dystopian Reality
Eli Kim, design editor
The world seems to be getting darker and more dystopian each day, ironically enough, because we’re not reading enough dystopian literature. Books are important to the future of society. Whether it's a young scientist getting inspired by a science fiction book to create the next hoverboard, or a student learning the fundamentals of the universe, what we read has an important effect on the future. Dystopian literature, however, offers a new perspective on the whole “learning from books” idea. It reads more as a prophetic warning of what society could look like without a specific social construct or some form of technology now. But, even now at the off chance that society gets the chance to just glance at these increasingly realistic dystopias, people are destroying them before they can even exist in the first place.
Most dystopian novels tend to critique the government or structures that make up the government. Capitalism is a good example, as there are so many different spins that authors have put on this trope of a world entrenched in capitalism. Whether it’s a world where every tree has been taken off the earth and even oxygen has been turned into a commodity to be paid for, or a fight to the death in an arena while the elites sit back, sip their tea and enjoy. These are all products of capitalism, extreme of course, but products, nonetheless. The profit motive and the elites’ desire to control practically everything is also what drives our modern world. However, modern capitalism takes the form of brightly colored advertisements and flashing neon billboards rather than the gloomy portrayal of the old, English authors.
Some movies nowadays tend to use that as an excuse to dilute the original message of the book, bleeding the lines between dystopian literature and a worrying reality. This was the case for George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” with those crazy, anthropomorphic characters running around with their cars completely unrelated to Orwell’s critiques of totalitarian society. However, “The Hunger Games,” has survived (and conquered) its time in modern media, cementing Suzanne Collins’ message into the media forever.
"I grew up on the Hunger Games. Like reading the books, watching the movies, that sort of stuff," admits Junior Arin Joshi, an avid book reader. Its anticapitalist theme and fiery messages towards authority have unknowingly made it a timeless youth anthem; a legacy that still makes its way into 2026 with countless movie adaptations and the endless prequels/sequels.
Not all media was made to last. Books are currently being fed into Artificial Intelligence (AI) chat bots like Claude, stripping every shred of originality they once had and destroyed by AI companies just to avoid copyright law. They are even going as far as ripping the spines off physical copies, quite literally wrecking them, just to have something to scan in order to generate more AI slop content. Language models are adapting to the ancient texts, with CEOs of major AI programs like Anthropic claiming that these programs are just as capable of writing as human authors are, while they tear apart real, human work.
Even the laws are on their side. In the copyright lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the scanning of physical books into digital copies, even when the originals were destroyed, constituted transformative fair use. Later, federal judges issued similar fair use rulings in separate copyright cases involving OpenAI and Meta, according to decrypt.co.
The fact of the matter is society is going down a path that may be irreversible, and if we were to ironically preserve a copy or two of “Fahrenheit 451,” we would know how brightly the fire we’ve created will burn.