SOURCE: Beauchamp, Gorman. “Technology in the Dystopian Novel.” Modern Fiction Studies 32, no. 1 (spring 1986): 53-63.

In the following essay, Beauchamp examines the role of technology in various utopian and dystopian works, noting that the fear of technology is a prominent characteristic of the dystopian genre.

In 1903 the late Victorian novelist George Gissing wrote:

I hate and fear “science” because of my conviction that for a long time to come if not forever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under the mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts. …

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Although Gissing puts the case against “science”—by which he clearly seems to mean technology—in the most extreme form, still his is a view shared by many, perhaps even by most twentieth-century literary...