I'm working on this subject, connecting B with utopia and dystopia, I wonder what you think about it? do you know any article on this?
Thank you

Try reading the title story in "The Toynbee Convector."

This is a really interesting question, and I would need to review a lot of his works to come to any conclusion.

I don't think (off the top of my head) that he is either. He seems to have an optimism that is rooted in the reality of the human condition.

If you define a utopia as something that consists of a society that "enforces" good, I would say he is definitely not a utopian, as he seems to oppose "unnecessary" restrictions on human beings. But does he think it possible that a basically good society could be made? I would speculate that given a free society and a society where respect is taught, etc., I don't see Bradbury as a pessimist.

Hmmmm. I'm rambling. Sorry.

Back to roots:

Dystopia = "An imaginary place, as a country, of total misery and wretchedness".

Utopia = "An ideally perfect place, esp in it's socio-political aspects. An impractical, idealistic concept for social and political reform".

I think Bradbury might say that any effort -- through taking away the freedom of individual persons -- to create a utopia, will necessarily create a dystopia.

How's that?

I think that through his stories we can feel which is his concept of what society should be, that's why I see him as an utopist, he has ideas about what is wrong in society and he puts them in his stories. So by pointing what is wrong, and doing what he says, to prevent the future, he is being utopist.Couldn't his perfect society be an utopia?

The question is twofold:

1) What would constitute the components of a utopian/perfect society in Bradbury's eyes? (Certainly freedom would rank high. What else?)

2) How does a society get from the here-and-now real world to the kind of utopian society Bradbury (or others) may envision.
Does the ends justify the means? Logan's run had the idea that we should just cut people off at 30. That would keep us all young. This cult in France that claims to have cloned a human, feels that they will live forever by cloning themselves and putting their memories/experiences into the younger clone. By repeating this as you get older, "you" live forever. But what if the clone doesn't want "your" experiences/memories in him? What then? Also, this forces you to ask the question, "What is a 'you'?" Who are we, really? What constitutes the self?

Some big questions in there.

Also, in how many of Bradbury's depictions of the future is there a "happy" ending? Having ideal aspects of a society doesn't necessarily mean that you believe we will ever actually get there.

The problem for Bradbury (as I see it) is that a utopian society would necessarily include freedom. But if people are free, they are free to do good and bad. A society that has to deal with good and bad, has to have a means of dealing with the bad. For a Bradbarian utopia to work, everyone in that society would have to freely choose to follow whatever characteristics a utopian sociey would contain. What are the odds of a complete society all choosing to live by high principles?

For example, his fiction portrays television (and television substitutes) as demeaning to man. Would he ban them from his version of a utopian society? If he doesn't ban them, how utopian is it to have a significant number of the population sitting around denying human development? If he bans them, he has decided that someone can make a decision that restricts others' freedoms without them having a say about it. Doesn't that sound totalitarian?



[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 01-08-2003).]

Yes it would be a totalitarian regime, so we could say that the concretization of utopia would bring dystopia, as in Fahrenheit, wouldn't it?
As I read it I see that we cannot have utopia without dystopia and the other way round. We(humans) have to have dreams in order to survive, we need to go after the light in the end of the tunnel. And as we are so different what is ideal for me isn't for you, so my idea of an ideal society may clash with yours, as I would impose my choices.
Can't we say that B has an utopia in mind when he gives his opinion about technology, for instance?

While Bradbury has ideas of what constitutes the good, I've never seen him describe a successful utopia. Interestingly, I'm not sure it's been done.

I think the problem is as you describe in your last post -- man must be free to pursue what constitutes the ideal for him (or her, I'm using 'him' as a universal). This could -- most likely would -- create conflict as persons need different things.

To settle these conflicting needs and desires, laws and governments are put in place. But, as the political philosophers have all known, government is a compromise of absolute freedom for some acceptable level of security.

I agree with what you seemed to imply, that in order to create a utopia, one would need a totalitarian government, which would be definitionally opposed to what a utopia would ultimately want to provide -- freedom for the individual. I think the idea of a utopia, therefore, is a contradiction. After all, the society envisioned in F451 could hardly be called a utopia! No freedom, no individuality, no intellectual depth, no creativity. What is left that could be called utopian once you take away freedom?

Is it theoretically possible to have a totalitarian government, creating a utopia, that is not miserable? If so, you may not have a dystopia at all. Unfortunately for that speculation, history provides many counter-examples and not a single example of that occuring. Historically, the claim of the communists was that there would be a society where all would have enough and ownership would be universal. Clearly a utopian claim. It has yet to work, anywhere, and dystopia, historically has followed totalitarianism like night follows day.


[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 01-08-2003).]

Don't you see some hope in B's stories?
Have you read "The Blue Bottle" and "have I got a chocolate bar for you"?
I think that here he leaves a door open to hope and confidence in human beings.At first reading we may not feel it but after we see that B believes in men's qualities to fight for what they think is the best for them. For me it is through his images of dystopian nature, when we feel shocked with the lack of freedom as you've pointed out, that we
ourselves react and by that he wants us to see the things the way he sees them. He is against technological development, and I myself when reading some of his stories feel like him, but then reality calls me to life again, and I don't see myself working without a computer, and I know that by using it , mostly internet, I am loosing my privacy as someone may enter my computer and share my life without telling me but knowing me. But as in B's stories I hope that they don't get too nosy on my life.

Ray certainly does stress persevering despite negativity, moreso than the average author (or anyone who can communicate to a mass audience, for that matter).

However, I disagree that Ray is against technological development. In an interview posted online (forgive me for not knowing the source - I don't think I found it from raybradbury.com, and so have little hopes of finding it again), the interviewer asked if Ray was against technology. He replied that technology in and of itself was not wrong, but the way we allowed technology to overtake us was counterproductive. He gave the example of talking on the telephone with the interviewer - the telephone, in that situation, was a godsend. It allowed Ray and the interviewer to communicate over long distances with relative ease. Of course, the phone could be used incorreclty. Computers, he said, were great sources of information, but were sorely misused today.

In hopes of staying somewhat on with the original topic, a utopia seems like an impossibility. Utopias - multiple, somewhat seperate societies of people grouped by their idea of a utopia, is a lot more feasible. One person may want a society without competition, where everybody lives in agreeable harmony. Another may enjoy competetiveness, whether through sports or other mediums. I think we are far too diversified as a species to hope to pigeonhole everybody in one utopian society.

When I say Bradbury doesn't write of successful utopias, I didn't mean to imply he doesn't have faith in the individual human. In F451, Montag, Charisse and Faber are great characters who both survive and thrive under totalitarian regime. While it does not end with a happy little utopia, it does end with hope residing in a small, free community of individuals who will restore the depth of man's knowledge and experience when it is safe to do so. The fact that they wait and prepare implies and active hope -- not just a passive wish.

The idea of smaller communities accommodating individually related preferences is a nice idea. Read Nathaniel Hawthornes "Blithedale Romance" for a historical novel about one. Hawthorne actually lived in a small ideal-minded Transcendentalist commune. Sadly, there was even trouble there. But this is a far more likely scenario resulting in at least the theoretical possibility of a utopia.

I think Bradbury is right to put faith in individuals and not in communities. Communities are compromises. Like marriages, they can provide great security and fulfillment, but they are also compromises (not that ALL compromises are bad!).

I love "The Blue Bottle".

I agree that I don't see Bradbury as anti-technology, but he does not see it as a panacea that will magically overcome evil, pain and suffering, either. My personal view is I love what technology has brought us, but recognize that it has also brought the power to destroy on a scale that could only have been considered apocolyptic a few generations ago. I was in a museum a couple years ago looking at a painting of two girls at a piano, and I had this epiphany that with my shelf CD player at home and my collection of 1500 CDs, I have access to more and better music than was available to European kings just a couple generations ago. The internet has a bunch of garbage on it (up to 40% porn from what I've read), but it also has fantastic things like this forum and all kinds of educational capabilities that I'm just now beginning to understand and grasp. I was bit my a Brown Recluse Spider a couple months ago resulting in a toxic reaction, multiple infections and a blood clot. Without modern medicine, I may not have made it through. I am not anti-technology, either. But I agree with Bradbury that technology can never replace human emotion, compassion, kindness, conversation, touch, laughter and love.

Would you say that "the blue bottle" is fantasy or sf? or is it scientific fantasy?
I just love it, it is very difficult to explain why. But I don't see it as sf. It goes after a fulfilment in life, and are we all looking for it? and I also see more care about feelings and emotions than about science.

Bradbury has said that the only Science Fiction he has written is Farenheit 451. The Blue Bottle I definitely see as a fantasy -- a very good one.

I sometimes feel confused when I have to differentiate between sf and fantasy, here we don't have much information these to literary genres. Which book or articles on literary criticism about this would you advise?

Bradbury's distinction between fantasy and science fiction was something to the effect that if something could conceivably happen, it is Science Fiction. If it is not within the laws of nature, it is fantasy. For example, many consider "Martian Chronicles" to be science fiction because it deals with interplanetary travel and the future, and the colonization of another planet, but Bradbury viewed it as fantasy and compared it to the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. The reason is that for purposes of telling the stories, he just made it so that Mars had breathable oxygen. Mars does not have breathable oxygen and, most likely never will. So it is fantasy, rather than science fiction. F451 is science fiction because nothing in it defies scientific laws. While Bradbury claims F451 is his only science fiction piece, I think some of his short stories, like "The Pedestrian" or "Kaleidoscope" are science fiction. But the bulk of his work (by his definition) is either fantasy or fiction.

Ben Bova wrote, in an essay called, "The Role of Science Fiction," the following:

"Science fiction writers are not in the business of predicting the future. They do something much more important. They try to show the many POSSIBLE futures that lie open to us . . . For there is not simply a future, a time to come that's preordained and inexorable. Our future is built, bit by bit, minute by minute, by the actions of human beings. One vital role of science fiction is to show what kinds of future might result from certain kinds of human actions."

Ben Bova. "The Role of Science Fiction". in "Science Fiction Today and Tomorrow". Ed Reginold Bretnor. Penquin Books, Baltimore. 1974.

What Bradbury wants to keep as the distinction is the word "possible" used in the above quote. If it is not possible, it is fantasy. If it is possible, it is science fiction.

Scientific fiction is a reasonable term. A more common one is speculative fiction.

Obviously, in some cases the line between fantasy and science fiction is sometimes unclear.

Hawthorne wrote of his stories that he wanted them called "tales" because he wanted them to occur in a twilight area between the directly real and the imaginative real. That way he could tell his stories and manifest his morals without the limitations of straight fiction. I think that is essentially what Bradbury does in much of his work.

Further to this:

From Meriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, the following two definitions are given:

Fantasy = "Imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times) and of characters (such as supernatural or unnatural beings). . . Science-fiction can be seen as a form of fantasy, but the terms are not interchangeable, as science fiction usually is set in the future and is based on some aspect of science or technology, while fantasy is set in an imaginary world and features the magic of mythical beings."

Science-Fiction = "Fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals; or more generally, literary fantasy including a scientific factor as an essential orienting component. Such literature may consist of a careful and informed extrapolation of scientific facts and principles, or it may range into far-fetched areas flatly contradictory of such facts and principles. In either case, plausibility based on science is a requisite, so that such a precursor of the genre as Mary Shelley's gothic novel 'Frankenstein' (1818) is science fiction, whereas Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897), based as it is purely on the supernatural, is not."

"Meriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature". Meriam Webster, Incorporated, Publishers. Springfield, Massachusetts. 1995.

Hope this helps.


[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 01-08-2003).]

Thank you Mr.Dark., it helps a lot. I have another question for you. Isn't the fact of Mars having the environment of Earth a utopia? Because that way humans could live there without health problems.