Dystopian stories are becoming increasingly popular. That’s true in entertainment: Think “Walking Dead,” “Mad Max,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the Maze Runner franchise, to name just a few. And it’s also true for how observers and commentators talk about the real world.

That’s a change. In a LexisNexis search of aggregated news sources, we found only five mentions of “dystopia” or “dystopian” in 1985. That number increased dramatically every five years — and by last year, it had shot up to 25,078.

Whether or not these anxieties about impending dystopia are well-grounded, Americans are more interested in dystopian fiction than ever, particularly in totalitarian-dystopian fiction, set in dark and disturbing alternate worlds such as that of “The Hunger Games,” where powerful elites violate ethical values and downtrodden protagonists rebel.…  Seguir leyendo »