The Future’s So Bright

I’ve been watching a lot of action movies lately, inspired in part by Don’s Manly Monday series. It started with “Team America: World Police” and “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” and so far I’ve worked my way through “Live Free and Die Hard,” “Demolition Man,” “Con Air,” and most of “Lethal Weapon” recently. For some of those, it’s not the first time I’ve seen them, but there are others that I missed for one reason or another. “Demolition Man” is one that I’d managed never to see before, despite the massive amounts of hype I remember surrounding its release, and while it’s not the best of my recent marathon, it certainly gave me a lot to think about.

See, I love dystopian stories. I love the semi-reasonable ones and the fantastic ones and the blatantly ridiculous ones. I love the way they turn the slippery slope argument into a world-building exercise. I love the way that they can provide a handy reference for actual social issues. I’ve read and watched a lot of dystopian stories, and while there’s a lot of quality variation, I can’t think of any that I didn’t enjoy to some degree.

So, because I don’t have enough to do, I’m going to start a series of posts discussing some of the features and commonalities of my favorite dystopias. Unlike most of my posts, I’ll probably go back and edit these periodically to add titles to each list. Like most of my posts, I’m not going to put any kind of schedule or restriction on this, because FSM knows I’ll never be able to keep to it. But it’ll give me an outlet for some percolating thoughts, and I think it could be interesting.