An imagined bad or evil society, especially in literature, where conditions are terrible and people suffer under oppressive systems.
Coined in the 19th century as the opposite of 'utopia.' It combines 'dys-' (bad) with 'topos' (place), creating a mirror image of Thomas More's 1516 'utopia' (good place).
Dystopias are basically the evil twin of utopias—while utopias ask 'what if everything was perfect?', dystopias ask 'what if everything went terribly wrong?' Books like 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale aren't just scary stories; they're warnings about how freedom can be slowly eroded.
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