The mysterious disappearance of dystopian fiction
Popular Young Adult (YA) dystopian series Divergent by Veronica Roth and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
2012-2014 was an era. Unforgettable, really.
We all had a weird obsession with moustaches, bowties and terrariums and the appearance of Snapchat and Vine really set us up for an embarrassing few years to look back on. Days were filled with Subway Surfers, Dumb Ways To Die and strange parodies of pop songs.
There’s so many things that could define such a time, but there was one craze, one phenomenon, which took our tiny prepubescent minds by storm and that was Young Adult dystopian fiction.
Think The Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner, Uglies, The Giver, The Selection, Ready Player One, Red Queen. For ease and accuracy, I’ll be referring to these books as a ‘niche’ under the disgustingly broad umbrella that is dystopian fiction.
Those books shaped entire personalities.
People were rocking up to school with Katniss-inspired braids and spent their time taking a BuzzFeed quiz on which Divergent faction you should be in based on increasingly obscure questions. A rapid rise in Dylan O’Brien and Josh Hutcherson Google searches (and Wattpad fanfic, let’s be real) defined these exciting yet extremely cringe years.
It had its teeth completely stuck into us. Even those who didn’t read were devouring these books. It was an endemic.
And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t.
We stopped reading The Hunger Games and Divergent and moved towards other genres, but particularly the fantasy realm of fiction.
Firstly, it’s imperative to make the distinction between fantasy and dystopian fiction. Dystopian fiction more closely aligns with science fiction, both belonging to the larger category of speculative fiction. Fantasy deals with the impossible, whereas dystopian is centred around what is possible, even if it is highly improbable.
Dystopian novels usually focus on a rebellion against an authority or societal structure. Combined with a cornerstone protagonist who is unique and specifically set apart, it intertwines with that sense of empowerment which creates an increasingly favourable niche of novels. Young adults and teens have gravitated towards these kinds of series for years, reaching its pinnacle of popularity in 2012-2014, as we all well know.
Currently, Whitcoull’s Top 100 features far more fantasy than dystopian fiction. While the top category is romance by far, the Top 20 books consists of seven fantasy novels and just two dystopian novels, one of which being the prequel to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
The rise of BookTok and for the millennials amongst us, BookTube, has resulted in the ability for niche books to be launched into widespread popularity. People no longer have to rely on dodgy Goodreads reviews or limited bookstore stock to find something refreshing and new. Psychological and historical fiction has seen an increase in popularity from American writer Taylor Jenkins Reid, as well as more niche coming of age novels like Gabrielle Niven’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Many critics attribute the decline of dystopian fiction to its oversaturation and lack of new material or tropes. And to be fair, you can only read so many stories about a white protagonist rebelling against a futuristic totalitarian governing body before you start to get a little bored.
But the adaptation from novel to film invigorated audiences and was initially met with enthusiasm. The Hunger Games franchise remains to be the most successful from that niche, garnering $2.97 billion USD worldwide to date. The Maze Runner series hype slowly dissipated with each movie release. According to a report from Forbes, the initial movie made $32 million in its debut weekend, The Scorch Trials a year later with $30 million and The Death Cure trickling in with $23.5 million.
Even with a significant drop in the last installation of the series, it doesn’t rival the complete flop that was Allegiant from the Divergent series.
The first movie, Divergent, came out of their opening weekend with $54 million, Insurgent close behind on $52 million. Allegiant only made a disappointing $29.1 million, signalling the end of the franchise.
Recently though, The Hunger Games has seen a revival amongst younger audiences. Creators on TikTok release thirsty edits of Peeta and creatively crafted POVs about surviving in The Hunger Games, while that same treatment has not been applied to others in the same niche.
While the niche of YA dystopian fiction may be rapidly disappearing from the wider genre, it’s now evolving with its ageing audience. The ever-popular shows, Squid Games and Black Mirror are a testament to how these ideas have been adapted for an older viewer and demonstrates that for such a futuristic genre to survive, it needs to keep progressing.
So sure, we don’t have many new books that are similar to the YA dystopian fiction niche, but we’ve replaced them with others in the same genre, and also expanded out of that. Looking at the very monotonous pattern of that niche and how widely similar they all were, it’s no surprise there’s no new YA dystopian novels to take over from them.
At least we get to relive it all through those thirsty edits of Josh Hutcherson and I, for one, am not complaining.
