Really, America? The Curious Appeal of Dystopian Fiction
With the election of 47 as United States President in the rear-view mirror and the reality of a clownish, arbitrary, self-obsessed administration playing out in the present moment, you wouldn’t think there’d be any comfort to be gleaned from dystopian fiction. Yet what did I find myself downloading in audiobook format? Children of Men by P.D. James. It’s set in an England that is rather quaintly dated 2021, which must have seemed far away in 1992 but now feels counterintuitive. But honestly, that was the only point at which I had to work to suspend disbelief.
In this fictional time, no children have been born since the year Omega, 1995, and humans seem to have become completely infertile. (Note: Keep pollution going the way we seem bent on and it’s not impossible to imagine such a scenario.) It’s a bleak setting. The country is governed by a dictator, Xan Lyppiatt, who has assumed the jailor-like title of Warden, and is aided by a council that acts broadly at his behest. Right from the setup that reveals its social context, the novel raises uncomfortable questions about humanity's capacity not only to survive but also to govern itself.
But the title is significant for another reason—there’s a woman at the center of the story, living in a world that feels mostly directed by men. The council keeps on testing men and subjecting women to physical examinations in the hope of finding someone capable of producing children. That hope is dying but the thought-processes it gives rise to remain strong threads in the book. If and when any fertile bodies are found, what is to become of those people? Will that women be made to bear a child? Can she be forced to do so, perhaps more than once? So here we have a woman writer questioning the exploitation of women’s bodies and the power that drives such an impulse.
It reminded me in some ways of The Overstory, another novel of resistance that depends upon the seemingly fragile bonds of community and shared hope. I’ve been a P.D. James mystery fan for years, but never read this one. It feels as if it’s been waiting for me for over thirty years. Waiting, in fact, for this very moment in time, when the world’s oldest democracy appears to be questioning the fundamentals of its governance and placing the rest of the world on notice. It’s hard to believe that we are in a moment when we can foresee the EPA willingly fraying or simply ignoring its own regulations, letting the chemicals flow unrestricted.
