Happy Monday, everyone, and welcome to Dystopian Fiction 101! Our first cluster is an introduction to the genre (The Rise of Dystopian Fiction), and our first book is The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells.

I'd like to start with just a quick refresher on what we're talking about: from the Wikipedia article here, "the utopia and its offshoot, the ( Read more... )

I came across this NYT op/ed-debate regarding the dystopian trend in young adult novels via @wayword on Twitter and thought you might enjoy the read as it is at least tangentially relevant to the course. 
Enjoy :) Leave a comment

Happy Weekend, campers! Your friendly mods would like to take some time over the coming weeks for us to get to know one another. We'll start with ourselves.

First: brilligspoons, also known as Margaret, is a fabulously nerdy lady (and we use the term loosely) who wrote her undergrad thesis on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. You can still feel free to ( Read more... )