Would my story qualify as dystopian?
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The year is unspecified and could take place anywhere from the 2030s to the 2060s.
Story takes place in a region that was formerly the Philippines and now is another country separate from it.
Samuel Jakobsson, the main character and narrator, is a student selected by talent scouts who believe he is qualified for the Academy, a place that helps him train for a job based on one of his talents in fear of an upcoming war.
Later on, Samuel (who is already married) loses his wife in the war after the region is occupied by members of a country in the Middle East (a high-tech country that doesn’t exist right now) who want to claim the place and rule for a better life for themselves and their family, even if it means people will have to die. (“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”)
Post-war, Samuel marries a woman who contributed significantly to the war and also helped treat the wounded. The country they were living in no longer exists and everything was ruined, and she gets elected as ruler of the new country after repairing the damage inflicted by the war. She helps greatly with forming the new country.
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The year is unspecified and could take place anywhere from the 2030s to the 2060s.
Story takes place in a region that was formerly the Philippines and now is another country separate from it.
Samuel Jakobsson, the main character and narrator, is a student selected by talent scouts who believe he is qualified for the Academy, a place that helps him train for a job based on one of his talents in fear of an upcoming war.
Later on, Samuel (who is already married) loses his wife in the war after the region is occupied by members of a country in the Middle East (a high-tech country that doesn’t exist right now) who want to claim the place and rule for a better life for themselves and their family, even if it means people will have to die. (“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”)
Post-war, Samuel marries a woman who contributed significantly to the war and also helped treat the wounded. The country they were living in no longer exists and everything was ruined, and she gets elected as ruler of the new country after repairing the damage inflicted by the war. She helps greatly with forming the new country.
I wouldn't consider it particularly dystopian with a condition - the modern world is a dystopian corporate hellscape so nearly all modern setting tales are dystopian... your description of the setting and plot are certainly a society under pressure but assuming the new country isn't also a dystopian corporate hellscape it'd break with the tradition of dystopian literature where the actions of the characters leave the world no different than the initial state (sometimes names will change, or governments be overthrown only to be replaced with nearly identical ones) or, potentially, worse.
I think the "everything is awful and can only ever get worse" is pretty integral to dystopias.
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The year is unspecified and could take place anywhere from the 2030s to the 2060s.
Story takes place in a region that was formerly the Philippines and now is another country separate from it.
Samuel Jakobsson, the main character and narrator, is a student selected by talent scouts who believe he is qualified for the Academy, a place that helps him train for a job based on one of his talents in fear of an upcoming war.
Later on, Samuel (who is already married) loses his wife in the war after the region is occupied by members of a country in the Middle East (a high-tech country that doesn’t exist right now) who want to claim the place and rule for a better life for themselves and their family, even if it means people will have to die. (“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”)
Post-war, Samuel marries a woman who contributed significantly to the war and also helped treat the wounded. The country they were living in no longer exists and everything was ruined, and she gets elected as ruler of the new country after repairing the damage inflicted by the war. She helps greatly with forming the new country.
I’d say dystopian works. As for the other genres, I’m not sure. The story takes place in the future with advanced technology and deals with war.
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I wouldn't consider it particularly dystopian with a condition - the modern world is a dystopian corporate hellscape so nearly all modern setting tales are dystopian... your description of the setting and plot are certainly a society under pressure but assuming the new country isn't also a dystopian corporate hellscape it'd break with the tradition of dystopian literature where the actions of the characters leave the world no different than the initial state (sometimes names will change, or governments be overthrown only to be replaced with nearly identical ones) or, potentially, worse.
I think the "everything is awful and can only ever get worse" is pretty integral to dystopias.
What genre would it be then?
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The year is unspecified and could take place anywhere from the 2030s to the 2060s.
Story takes place in a region that was formerly the Philippines and now is another country separate from it.
Samuel Jakobsson, the main character and narrator, is a student selected by talent scouts who believe he is qualified for the Academy, a place that helps him train for a job based on one of his talents in fear of an upcoming war.
Later on, Samuel (who is already married) loses his wife in the war after the region is occupied by members of a country in the Middle East (a high-tech country that doesn’t exist right now) who want to claim the place and rule for a better life for themselves and their family, even if it means people will have to die. (“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”)
Post-war, Samuel marries a woman who contributed significantly to the war and also helped treat the wounded. The country they were living in no longer exists and everything was ruined, and she gets elected as ruler of the new country after repairing the damage inflicted by the war. She helps greatly with forming the new country.
Sure like dystopian scifi, but less the 1984-kind and more the Homefront or
Hunger Games-kind (the Academy thing gives me real YA novel vibes specifically that whole wave of Hunger Games like scifi). -
The year is unspecified and could take place anywhere from the 2030s to the 2060s.
Story takes place in a region that was formerly the Philippines and now is another country separate from it.
Samuel Jakobsson, the main character and narrator, is a student selected by talent scouts who believe he is qualified for the Academy, a place that helps him train for a job based on one of his talents in fear of an upcoming war.
Later on, Samuel (who is already married) loses his wife in the war after the region is occupied by members of a country in the Middle East (a high-tech country that doesn’t exist right now) who want to claim the place and rule for a better life for themselves and their family, even if it means people will have to die. (“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”)
Post-war, Samuel marries a woman who contributed significantly to the war and also helped treat the wounded. The country they were living in no longer exists and everything was ruined, and she gets elected as ruler of the new country after repairing the damage inflicted by the war. She helps greatly with forming the new country.
::: spoiler "Dystopian" as a concept can mean many things. One person's individual dystopia may be within a utopia.
Generally, I consider something to be dystopian if it is making negative assumptions about the future that are rooted in speculative fiction. These are more like science fiction, fantasy, or geopolitical.
I consider something utopian when it is unrealistic and glossing over aspects that are impossible or poorly premised while presenting them as positive.
An example of dystopian would be the Terminator films or most films and books about AI. These fall into a trope of the machine gods. These are no more than a retelling of a pantheon like mythos of supernatural gods. The issues of future AI are unrelated to this mythos. They are also based on the fallacy of dominance caused extinction. By this logic Earth is a monoculture. These conceptual abstractions are dystopian because they are making stupid handwaving assumptions that result in a dark and grim setting.
Depicting the messiness of reality does not mean a fictional story is either dystopian or utopian.
An example of a utopia is something like a biblical paradise. It is premised on brutal authoritarianism that lacks any objective nuances about the true diversity of life and opinions. It is glossing over the real differences in what people want and expect out of life in an idealized story arc that harms a lot of people. When these people are sidelined as irrelevant, the true underlying dystopian reality comes into view. Utopia is always a story of propaganda-like perfection masking a terror that lies beneath.
One can paint such abstractions on almost any story. These are not really genera even if someone calls them such.
You mentioned your story involves massive geopolitical upheaval. This concept could be painted as dystopian depending on how you write it. Throughout history there were many underlying reasons for changes. Like in the era of Alexander the Great, the conquests of the Macedonians in that age were more due to advances in equipment and a professionally trained army in an era that primarily consisted of less formal city states and small raiding parties. The era of the Romans was mostly the beginnings of broader social cohesion and coalitions of regions. The Great War and WW2 was the era of solidifying global boarders and the role of imperialism. If you are proposing a new era of evolving change, the reason for that change and why that change is a form of evolving progress in a geopolitical sense is important if you would like to abstract a label of utopian or dystopian. Otherwise it sounds like "war fiction" IMO.
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What genre would it be then?
I'm not certain - the genre would probably focus around the hero's journey to get there. It could be a modern/sci-fi adventure novel?
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