Welcome to My Low-Budget Dystopia

"19 out of 20 people in the world are younger than me. I've run aground on an alien planet."

Illustration by Ben Clarkson

Current Affairs magazine has made my article on vintage science fiction available online under the headline, “The Dystopias of Yesterday.” My working title was, “Welcome to My Low-Budget Dystopia.”

Just as it was being published, I connected via Facebook with the “Louie” of the following paragraph and his sister Toni (as she was known then). I was writing about Invaders From Mars, a movie I found absolutely terrifying when my age was in the single digits:

They replayed it on TV once a year. I would walk next door to my friend Louie’s house, we would watch it, and then I’d walk back across the lawn expecting the earth to swallow me at any moment. Those 30 feet or so were the longest journey of my young life.

I wrote those words and then, out of nowhere, there they were. Coincidence? No one can say for sure.

Here’s part of the setup:

According to statistics, you are almost certainly younger than me. There were 2.6 billion people on Earth the year I was born; now there are 8.6 billion. Two-thirds of the people born that year are now dead. Nineteen out of 20 people in the world are younger than me. I have run aground on an alien planet. Sometimes I feel the urge to anchor myself in space and time like a traveler caught between dimensions …

There were space futures, which I rated solely on how impressive the starships were. There were super-civilization futures, with elaborate painted cities and hovercars flitting from one spire to another. (These were good.) There were future fascist states (bad, but with impressive uniforms and technology), interplanetary wars (bad, but also kind of cool), and nuclear apocalypses (bad, and not even remotely cool). 

And there were low-budget dystopias, where it was obvious that the filmmakers didn’t have the money for special effects or set design … They weren’t the worst dystopias, but they were definitely bad. That’s the kind we live in now.

Sorry.

In retrospect, the references have a kind of found poetry to them: The Door Into Summer. Frankenstein 1970. The Roads Must Roll. Methuselah’s Children. E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Galactic Lensman novels. The Day the World Ended. Panic in Year Zero! Them!  The H-Man. Mothra.  Farewell to the Master. When Worlds Collide.  The Next Voice You Hear. Demon with a Glass Hand.

Nathan J. Robinson gave great editing feedback, and I love Ben Clarkson’s artwork.

If you read it, let me know what you think. And if you have your own memories of science fiction and how it shaped your thinking, you’re welcome to share it in the comments.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2024/02/the-dystopias-of-yesterday/