From Brave New World to Ready Player One; yesterday's dystopias as tomorrow's utopias

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the evolution of literary utopias and dystopias in light of what I consider to be the new master narrative of post-humanism. The inspiration for this project has been Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus (2017), which details some of the challenges and opportunities we might face in the future. This thesis will therefore explore the themes of his work and try to assess how this technological and ideological development changes our perception of an ideal society. I start this project by clarifying utopia and dystopia, before delving into a history of post-humanist ideology up to the present moment. This thesis then attempts a reading of Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley and Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline. This reading of these two works will be a twofold attempt, where a comparison of traditional liberal humanist readings will be compared to post-humanist understandings. What this hopefully highlights is how post-humanism changes the definitions of what constitutes utopias and dystopias. Finally, I want to compare the two works and hopefully glean new insights about how post-humanism redefines ideal visions and ideal societies and avoiding the dangers of both utopias and dystopias in the post-human age.