The Hunt for Tomorrow: Deborah Rix

Hey! It's my turn to share My Thoughts on Tomorrow. The Hunt is this weekend!

The Hunt for Tomorrow: Deborah Rix: Welcome to Dystopian High I didn’t set out to write a dystopian story, but once I imagined teenagers in a not-too-distant fu...

The Hunt for Tomorrow: Shelbi Wescott

The Hunt for Tomorrow: Shelbi Wescott: After years of writing literary fiction and querying and meeting rejection after rejection, I hadn’t thought of delving into ge...

The Hunt for Tomorrow: Joseph Turkot

THE HUNT FOR TOMORROW - JULY 18-20 - with 23 AUTHORS and 3 BOXED SETS full of DYSTOPIA
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The Hunt for Tomorrow: Joseph Turkot: Think of a utopia, and in your next breath you imagine a perfect society. Harmony unending. The living ideal. And something inside of us...

Alright Folks, it's 19 days and counting until The Hunt For Tomorrow. From the WHAT TOMORROW BY BRING boxed set is author Joseph Turkot's essay on Dystopian Fiction. Enjoy.

Dystopia, by Joseph Turkot
Think of a utopia, and in your next breath you imagine a perfect society. Harmony unending. The living ideal. And something inside of us says we can never reach such a place by our own efforts. Any attempt at perfection falls short, by whatever degree.
Think of a dystopia, and in your next breath you imagine the worst mankind has to offer—or more terrifying yet—the worst that will still come.
It is within the compromise of both these extremes that we find the dystopian novel. Some kind of hope for progress, contrasted against a great decadence, whether it be man’s own doing, or the nature he is formed from.
It is in such a struggle that our two friends find themselves. They are to each other more than they know, but a catastrophe that has ravaged the old progresses of civilization forces them to find out how much more, and what left of humanity remains alive in them.What does it mean to persevere? To possess resilience? To combat the loss of one’s own values? These are the kinds of questions I am interested in. These are the kinds of questions that Tanner and Russell face.
If everything we suppose to be good about our humanity slowly starts to decay, merely because it has to, what do we throw away first? What do we decide to take with us to our graves?
Some dystopian stories work upon the fantastical, and for that effort, produce a sense of wonder and awe. Some work upon the mundane realities of normal events, but push them so consistently that endurance itself is the last and only virtue. The Rain is a story about endurance in a dystopian world, where nature isn’t the reliable nurturer we egotistically assume it to be. Something awful has happened, and endless rain has drowned most of what was once called civilization and humanity. Russell says it’s the veneer. And he believes there is a place where it’s still thick. A place where it’s stopped raining. But as in all dystopian stories, weakness works ruthlessly upon the characters thrown into such dire hopes, and utopian fantasies are often never what they seem.
I wrote this story as an exploration of the human spirit, and its willingness to find some kind of negative capability within the compromise of two ideals—the utopian and the dystopian—the very reflection of which has more to say about our own society than we might have ever imagined possible.

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The Hunt for Tomorrow: Megan Thomason: I'm a huge fan of the dystopian genre and love to spend a lot of time thinking about societal extremes. The themes in daynight ,...

The Hunt for Tomorrow: Susan Kaye Quinn

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Jenni Merritt author of PRISON NATION from WHAT TOMORROW MAY BRING The YA Dystopian Boxed Set.

We, as such beautifully imperfect creatures, crave perfection.  We long for that perfect existence where everything is ideal and fair and safe.  So we try.  We create laws.  We enforce rules.  We embrace change, fight change, dream of change.  Then, when the bad things still happen, we question everything.  Can we make utopia?  Who knows if the answer will ever be found.  That is why we create dystopian stories.  To read, work out, understand and even enjoy the idea of society gone wrong.  Perfection would be too boring.  We need imperfection to fight, to live, to learn and grow.  

Dystopians are not only about society gone wrong.  They are about the people living in that society who choose to stand up and do something about their existence.  They are beautiful.  And imperfect.  Some fight and fail.  Others rise to the top and succeed.  And in the end, we all learn that even at its worse, life is worth living.  That is a dystopian.  And I love it.

PRISON NATION was inspired from one little moment that grew into an entire world.  Many say this story is frightening in the sense that so much of it is already happening.  Laws are intense and getting more strict every day.  Prisons are overfilled and growing.  We fear we have all lost control.  In PRISON NATION, that is the world.  Prisons and control and laws, all the way to the point that children are raised behind bars and freedom is just a dream.  So what would you do?  How would you survive in a world where near everything is illegal?  From an inspiration to a project to a debut novel, PRISON NATION is a journey I fell in love with every word of the way.  I hope you do too.

Get more info on all the books in the boxed set The Hunt For Tomorrow

WHAT TOMORROW MAY BRING

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David Estes, author of The Moon Dwellers, shares his thoughts on dystopia.

What ‘dystopia’ means to me by David Estes

I love dystopian novels. And I don’t just mean The Hunger Games, although I love that one, too. I’ve read dozens of dystopian novels and I never seem to get tired of them. For me, dystopian novels capture so much of what makes reading awesome. They explore real social issues and imaginative futures that may be only decades, or even years, from coming to pass. They are dark and suspenseful and funny and interesting, and, most of the time, scary.

But what I love the most is that they almost always contain an element of hope. The characters, who are many times thrust into terrible situations, endure and persevere and usually accomplish what they set out to do, against challenging odds. Hope.

Do I think any of the themes in dystopian novels will actually come to pass? Absolutely. Hopefully not in my lifetime, or my children’s lifetimes, but bad things will happen and new heroes will have to rise to the forefront and meet the challenges of their day.

But for now, I’ll imagine my own futures and the heroes that live them, and do my best to entertain my readers with stories of hope. Starting with my first dystopian novel, The Moon Dwellers. For this series, I’ve created two different societies, one living underground (three books: The Moon Dwellers, The Star Dwellers, The Sun Dwellers), one living aboveground (three books: Fire Country, Ice Country, Water & Storm Country), which then come together in a final epic 7^th book, The Earth Dwellers, where the characters and plot lines smash into one story. I hope you enjoy the dystopian world I’ve created!

For more on David go here: David Estes Books

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The Hunt For Tomorrow