In an early and cheerful work, Dickens had his hero Mr Pickwick declare that 'travelling was in a troubled state, and the minds of coachmen were unsettled'. Pickwick Papers was published in 1837: fast forward 180 years, and travelling continues to be in a troubled state, to put it mildly, and the vast majority of minds are unsettled for a variety of reasons.
Dickens' mood, of course, darkened. Although he never lost his comic vision and his ability to create convincing characters, much of his writing took on the nature of a crusade, as he tackled the plight of poor and abused children, the lumbering and harsh machinery of the law, and the dire state of education: to people with any social conscience, all these matters were of grave concern in the middle years of the 19th century.
Something similar can be said of the dystopian novels now available to us, as most seem to concentrate on warnings about the future that are based on current trends in society. Debate continues about the matter, but there is a strong case for arguing that Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was the first novel in the dystopian genre to be written in English; a great many have followed since 1726.
Small wonder that there is a particular surge of interest in dystopian novels at present: many people feel that times have never been so troubled or so complicated, although I remember my father pointing out that people felt the same when the longbow and later gunpowder were invented.
Amazon recently reported that Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, both dating from the mid-20th century, are selling like hot cakes. This at a time when certain purveyors of doom are lamenting the fact that 26 per cent of Americans, for example, did not read a single book during 2016, and wringing their hands, in a manner of speaking, about the death of the novel.
"Any worthwhile novel changes mindsets; successful dystopian novels offer both warnings and hope."
The novel has been supposedly gasping its last for as long as I can remember, so that I am reminded of Mark Twain's comment on his own supposed death: 'The reports of this death are an exaggeration.' Although visual trends have shifted from print to image during the last 30 years, the novel continues to flourish and in various genres.
John Feffer, American writer and foreign policy analyst, has lately written his own dystopian