Before I left on my hiatus from my online life here, I had started a series of blogs sort of intended to look at some of the finer points binding together dystopian fiction and loosely how this pertains to comics. I made reference to this is a previous post though and one of the interesting things about the use of the dystopian society of the Amazons in Flashpoint is that the action was based in London. In terms of this use for dystopian fiction it shows up fairly often in this genre. To explain the genre, a bit of history of the genre is needed. Although many think that the genre started solely as a reaction to the rise of communism in the early 20 century, this is not entirely the case. The earliest writers of dystopia wrote their stories as a counter reaction to the world of the Sleeper Awakes as written by H.G. Wells. The future here was depicted as too rose-coloured for most of the authors, and Zamyatin’s We led to Huxley’s Brave New World which led to Orwell’s 1984. All of these dystopian stories (including The Sleeper Awakes) were set in London (or at least in in what is implied to be the largest city in England), and more followed. In the past thirty years there have been a few other famous entries into the genre, but one of the most famous has been the comic book V for Vendetta, which is also set there. The reasoning behind the inclusion of the city is obvious from a historical standpoint. Up to today London remains as a cosmopolitan city which defines culture and this was even more so the case in the early 20 century. It is reasonable to think that the futuristic cities would exist without London existing but all too often the old city on the Thames has served as the basis for a future gone wrong.
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