Exhibit on display March 3 – May 5, 2023, Founders Library, fourth floor
The extensive Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Collection in Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) allowed me to easily explore the concept of dystopia. The popular concept of dystopia is evident in important and impactful films and books from Metropolis (1927), one of the most important and celebrated science fiction films of all time, to the bleak and depressing visuals of cinematic milestones like The Terminator (1984) or the film adaptation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982). Today’s franchises like The Hunger Games (2008-2010, 2020) and Metro (2002), suggest its influence will not be waning anytime soon.
While compiling different resources, I realized how varied the genre is. While the typical brutal dictatorship most often characterizes the ‘dystopia’ genre, there are so many other possibilities including works built around the fear of the growing specter of nuclear conflict during the Cold War or the rapid advances in robotics and automation during the early and mid-twentieth century. My favorite overall aspect of this project was getting to experience the varied pulp-fiction magazines and cheap novels produced to feed people’s hunger for similar themes and stories. Outside of NIU’s RBSC, I would have been hard pressed to see such a quantity of pulp dystopian narratives. The cover art as well as the numerous illustrations found in magazine interiors, all created long before the days of modern computer graphics, are beautiful and at times startling. Examples of this art are shown in the exhibit.
Most interesting, however, were characteristics that I discovered about these older works. For example, I found many double novels, where you had one novel for half of the book and then flipped it over to read a new novel on the other half to truly get your money’s worth. Another interesting feature of older books, however, were their full-page ads in the center of a text for cigarettes. It was ironic to see an advertisement for something that was bad for you in a piece of work trying to warn you away from the terrible things that could create dystopia in books. Please drop by to see my exhibit and get some ideas for works you might want to read in the future!
Sean Carter
Sean Carter is a 2022-2023 Graduate Assistant in Rare Books and Special Collections at NIU’s Founders Library.
