Dystopias in dystopian times: series and books after the apocalypse

"If there is

about the future, it is a dystopian novel about the future that was written in the past and has already begun to come true."

Gloria Steinem's phrase in the prologue of

by Octavia E. Butler (Captain Swing) is most pertinent in this post-covid world in which we continue to seek to give it a meaning and an ending that may not exist.

The prophetic ability of Dean R. Koontz, who anticipated the pandemic in a manner in

(1981), is just one example of the power of fiction to pose futures so plausible that they end up being real.

In their role as augurs, writers and screenwriters have the ability to illuminate, challenge or deconstruct our present pandemic.

This is demonstrated by series and books such as

,

or

, the closing of the homonymous trilogy by

.

In all these oblique looks at our present written years before the covid, the cause of different types of dystopian futures is a pandemic!

"Survival is not enough" is the explicit motto of

, the HBO Max series based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award. Thus, what book and series renounce the already classic tale of survivors repeated ad nauseam by zombie

and the like. The narrative is not without drama, but a warm humanist breath welcomes the viewer / reader from the first bars of this story of hope and redemption.

Behind that feeling of

that runs through the series is Patrick Sommerville. The person in charge of

,

and this exemplary adaptation in substance and form, narrates with the help of directors such as Hiro Murai or Jeremy Podeswa the vicissitudes of a group of interconnected characters before and after the pandemic cataclysm.

The doomsday clock has not yet struck the last hour, and the few survivors have had to learn to fend for themselves in

, grouping themselves into small communities like the Traveling Symphony.

This itinerant group of actors and musicians is dedicated to tour relentlessly through the Great Lakes area, in the heart of the United States, performing works of Shakespeare as if their life depended on it.

And, in a way, that's the way it is: comedians are a last bastion of vitalism.

Ultimately,

is nothing if not a reflection, at times enigmatic, at times moving, on what gives true meaning to human lives, what we would choose to save if we lost everything.

Still from the series 'Anna'

For its part, the miniseries

, a French-Italian co-production available since December on Disney +, starts from a disturbing approach:

, due to the spots on the skin of those who contract it, has wiped out all adults . The disease is latent in children until they reach adolescence, so chaos has taken hold of what are no longer more than the decaying ruins of the recent past.

Niccolò Ammaniti, director of the series and author of the 2015 book on which it is based, turns the imposing Sicilian landscapes in which the story takes place into a country of nightmares seen from the point of view of a child: a mixture of carnival , dream delusion and garbage. At times, Ammaniti recreates a realistic and macabre violence, even more unpleasant when dealing with truncated innocence. But sometimes he is also carried away by the tradition of the fantastic in Italian cinema. Anna seems sometimes in

passed by Fellini and Sorrentino.

Few can speak of fulfilled prophecies and certain dystopias with the authority of Margaret Atwood. The author of

does not yet have all of her work available in Spanish, a gap that Ediciones Salamandra intends to correct with the publication of the

trilogy . The installment of the same name, the third and last part of this satire in an ecological key, continues what was narrated in

and

and

, set in

that explores the social implications of bioscience and extrapolates the horrors of our current trajectory environmental

Atwood already knew in 2003, when the first installment was published, that

, without a steering wheel and without brakes, and hence this funny and scathing speculative fiction in which there is also room for affection.

It is likely that, as has happened with

, the new television adaptation of

by Stephen King or the version of

,

and

are victims of pandemic fatigue.

Will be an error.

Since we started this journey with a quote, let's top it off with another, Atwood vintage: "People need stories because dark as it may be,

."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Coronavirus

• U.S

• Disney

• culture

• movie theater

CineWest Side Story and The Power of the Dog make the saddest night of the Golden Globes theirs

The flight into the future of fiction: series without masks, films without Covid and new dystopia

Spider-Man's real mission: save the Marvel universe

See links of interest

• Last News

• 2022 business calendar

• How to do

• Home THE WORLD today

• Check Christmas Lottery 2021

• Check Child's Lottery

• Barcelona - Milan, live

• Barcelona-Real Madrid: the Super Cup Classic, live