Favorite dystopia

Which is your favorite dystopia?

  • Nazis rule the Earth

    Votes: 29 14.0%
  • Communists rule the Earth

    Votes: 17 8.2%
  • A Mongol empire that lasts forever

    Votes: 14 6.8%
  • Taliban rule the Earth

    Votes: 9 4.3%
  • 1984 (three Communist states at perpetual war)

    Votes: 35 16.9%
  • Brave New World

    Votes: 15 7.2%
  • Aztecs rule the world - and kept their old religion, with human sacrifices

    Votes: 4 1.9%
  • Mafia, Yakuza, Triades and co. rule the world

    Votes: 8 3.9%
  • Cyberpunk: Corporates rule everything

    Votes: 29 14.0%
  • After the nuclear holocaust-world

    Votes: 47 22.7%

  • Total voters
    207
1984 is my favorite dystopia, but I subscribe to the belief that the citizens of Airstrip One are simply being lied to and that it's just a North Korea-esque successor state to the United Kingdom: there are no massive world powers, there is no perpetual war, it's not one worldwide power "fighting itself". It's just a sad, sorry Britain that has performed the ultimate lie unto its people and secluded itself from the world.

Oh, dear. A necro. Sorry, everyone.
 
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Dialga

Banned
I'm a sucker for Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic worlds myself. Much more potential for action and adventure than in the other choices (although cyberpunk can certainly pull its weight in this regard).
 
I like 1984 because it's the most realistic IMO, since we actually have had regimes like the ones described.
 
I really can't decide between Cyberpunk and Mongols. Cyberpunk is the end of society, literally. It would be when humanity has gone so far beyond the pale that there is no way to get back to the days when we actually had rights and were thought of as people. IT's a dark idea. But the Mongols are even worse. A Mongol conquest of the whole world would destroy EVERY civilization just as much as they destroyed the Islamic Caliphate. If anyone would remember that one phrase, "and the rivers of Baghdad ran black with the ink of the great library's books". Yeah. That means that the very light of progress itself is snuffed out, or at least pushed back so far as to mean that we will basically be at the Renaissance about now. Even worse, all of the world will be like Moscow after the conquest: "a great, hollow, empty graveyard of a city with one or two hundred inhabitants huddled around cooking fires in the center." Basically, the end of all modern civilization and progress before it even began. You know what? I'm'a choose mongols.
 
After The Bomb.

I can drive like Steve McQueen, I'm good with a gun, I know what to scavenge, who's worth the bullets it takes to protect, how to barter with the best of them and I look good in black leather.

So if I have to choose one, I say hit the 'ol Reset button, welcome the new dark ages and call me "Aunty"...:cool:
 
I didn't see slavepunk listed, so here goes: a wanked Rome with elements of pharonic Egypt folded in. A tiny, decadent, effete aristocracy rules over masses of rural and urban slaves with the help of an elite of soldiers, literate slaves and perhaps a few eunuchs. Gladiatorial games evolve into recreational warfare between slave armies, with aristocrats betting on the outcome. The absolute preponderance of dirt-cheap labor would effectively preclude advanced tech, perpetuating the slave dependent society.
 
I didn't see slavepunk listed, so here goes: a wanked Rome with elements of pharonic Egypt folded in. A tiny, decadent, effete aristocracy rules over masses of rural and urban slaves with the help of an elite of soldiers, literate slaves and perhaps a few eunuchs. Gladiatorial games evolve into recreational warfare between slave armies, with aristocrats betting on the outcome. The absolute preponderance of dirt-cheap labor would effectively preclude advanced tech, perpetuating the slave dependent society.


;) see Draka/Confederate Empire scenario
 

Spengler

Banned
my two are A World of Laughter, A World of Tears and Brave New World. Also really enjoy Fear and Loathing and Gumbo on the campaign trail.
 
I really can't decide between Cyberpunk and Mongols. Cyberpunk is the end of society, literally. It would be when humanity has gone so far beyond the pale that there is no way to get back to the days when we actually had rights and were thought of as people. IT's a dark idea. But the Mongols are even worse. A Mongol conquest of the whole world would destroy EVERY civilization just as much as they destroyed the Islamic Caliphate. If anyone would remember that one phrase, "and the rivers of Baghdad ran black with the ink of the great library's books". Yeah. That means that the very light of progress itself is snuffed out, or at least pushed back so far as to mean that we will basically be at the Renaissance about now. Even worse, all of the world will be like Moscow after the conquest: "a great, hollow, empty graveyard of a city with one or two hundred inhabitants huddled around cooking fires in the center." Basically, the end of all modern civilization and progress before it even began. You know what? I'm'a choose mongols.


Was Kublai Khan's Cathay living in a Dark Age? For that matter was the Persian Il-khanate?

The process of conquest was a grisly business, but then it generally is. Was what happened in Baghdad or Moscow any worse than what happened to Carthage or Corinth at Roman hands? Pity about the library, but the one in Alexandria suffered a similar fate when Julius Caesar came visiting. These things happen in war, and I've never heard it suggested that the Mongols, any more than the Romans, went out of their way to burn books.

A surviving Mongol Empire wouldn't be Utopia, but probably wouldn't be any more of a Dystopia than many other regimes.
 
How about the world of "The Man in th High Castle?" Nazi-Japanese Cold War, with a Nuclear war in the offing, an Africa ethnically cleansed with the US England and Russia conquered
 
If I take "favorite" to mean the dystopic TL that I'm most interested in reading AH novels about, it's "Nazis rule the world."

If you mean "favorite" as the one I would least hate living in, it would be either "Brave New World" or "Cyberpunk" (although I never considered "cyberpunk having all that much to do with corporations ruling the world). In fact, to me having corporations ruling the world is not even particularly dystopic.

If you mean "favorite" as the absolute worst to live in, it would be "After nuclear holocaust" world (everybody might be dead or going to die in a few years) closely followed by "1984".

World-aide Mongol and Aztec Empires are just plain wierd.

I agree with other posters that the poll needed a "Draka rules the world" option.

(EDIT: Hmm, I didn't realize this was a resurrected thread from 2005 I already responded to. Glad to see that I pretty much agreed with my 2005 self)
 
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