dystopianism n.

dystopian quality or characteristics

SF Criticism

Dystopia

  • 1962 C. Walsh From Utopia to Nightmare ii. 27

    A strand of utopianism or dystopianism.

  • 1999 New Yorker 20 Sept. 121/1

    Immediately thereafter, with the rise of be-here-now Luddism (health food, macramé, Earth shoes), followed by disillusioned post-hippie dystopianism (the movies ‘˜Blade Runner’™, ‘˜Brazil’, ‘˜Mad Max’), any kind of hopeful speculation about the shape of things to come seemed corny and uncool.

  • 2015 J. Lepore Politics & the New Machine in New Yorker 16 Nov. 42/2 page image Jill Lepore

    Burdick’s dystopianism is vintage Cold War: the Strangelovian fear of the machine. (Burdick also co-wrote ‘Fail Safe,’ in which a computer error triggers a nuclear war.)

Research requirements

any evidence 1962
Earliest cite

C. Walsh, 'From Utopia to Nightmare'
Research History
Bee Ostrowsky submitted a 2015 cite from Jill Lepore in The New Yorker.

We could use a more filled-out entry.

Last modified 2024-11-17 00:09:25
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.