Similar to last week, I have recently been asked, “Given any Sci-Fi Universe, which would you not want to live in?”  This question, I think, is a bit more difficult than the last, because even dystopias can seem pretty good when you’re in the midst of them.  However, a good dystopia has a caveat to the goodness, and asks the question, “What does it cost?”

That’s why my first choice goes to 1984.  For me, this is classic thought control attempt, and really bothered me on a lot of levels.  First, the breadth of propaganda in the setting was stifling to me.  For me, the issue was that the propaganda was so obvious, and yet it was everywhere.  In the real world, there is far more propaganda than I really like to put up with, but it is, thankfully, avoidable.  In the world of 1984?  This is far less true, and would likely cause me mental, if not political, issues.

My next thought goes to the world pictured in the movie Equilibrium.  This is probably a lot less familiar to people, but the premise is that everyone was constantly on drugs that smoothed over emotional states, as that was the only way to mitigate a person’s hate for his fellow man.  I may not be a very emotionally expressive person, but, for me, drugs that change one’s mental state are something of an anathema.  In the real world, I recognize that others find significant value in their uses, and I hold nothing against their use, but for me, that’s not something I want.  To be forced into it, however, would violate my own principles, and be extremely difficult.

This time the honorable mention goes to the story Vengeance on Varos from Doctor Who (one of the Sixth Doctor’s stories).  Here, people are forced to watch torture on television and vote on whether the person should have to die.  A populous forced to be complicit in torture and murder is, well, pretty rotten at its core.