Isn’t
dystopian fiction the same as post-apocalyptic fiction? I’ve asked myself this
many times and I’m still not sure my answer is correct, because someone will inevitably
disagree with me at some point. And that’s okay!
The two
genres are very much alike. The worlds within dystopian and post-apocalyptic
novels do not resemble the world we are accustomed to waking to. No…life is
very different in these books. Maybe the world has changed in some way or maybe
the people have changed. It’s why I love reading and writing in these genres.
The easiest
way I distinguish the two is time and circumstances. Did a natural disaster,
virus, or war cause the world and people to change? If so, this would be
classified as apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic. We often see the cause of the world’s
change in these novels. Susan Beth Pfeffer’s LIFE AS WE KNEW IT is a good
example of post-apocalyptic fiction.
But what if
the world is already different? What if a new government has been implemented?
What if the survivors of whatever have moved on with their lives, now
struggling against something other than the world coming to an end? These
novels fall into the dystopian category. THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins is
the perfect example of dystopian.
As a writer
it’s important for me to know the difference in the two. I don’t want to
classify my work as something it’s not. But as a reader, I could care less,
because the genre may interest me, but what keeps me reading is the
believability of characters and a voice that lets me connect.
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