Dystopia is the opposite of utopia, which does not draw an ideal world. In the world of dystopia, a beautiful cover hides not the perfect social structure, and the main character resists the regime. Classic dystopias include Yevgeny Zamyatin's “We", Ray Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451", George Orwell's “1984", and many other works by Russian and foreign classics. These works, with all their differences, describe the political and social structure of the future society, explore the nature of power, the mechanism of leadership principle. All of them share a common concern for the fate of humanity.

Any work in the genre of dystopia is a look into the future, as it can become if a power-hungry person or group of people appears in the world and creates a society where certain rituals and roles are imposed on everyone.

For the first time, Max Patrick and Glenn Negley explained that the imaginary world of the story is not to tell about individual freedom, as it should be in society, but on logical research and introduced the concept of «dystopia» to the literary world. In other words, in such a world, a person is no longer a separately formed person, with his or her ideas, opinions, and outlook on life. It is a unit of the society created by the totalitarian regime, and it is obliged to obey the laws of this totalitarianism, to play the role that was imposed on it.

In Zamyatin's novel, in the twenty-sixth century, the inhabitants of the utopian world have lost their identity that they differ by number. They live in glass houses (this was written before the invention of television), which allows the political police, called the "Guardians", to easily oversee them. Everyone wears the same uniform and usually refers to each other either as “such-and-such number” or “unif” (uniform). They eat artificial food and march four in a row at a leisure hour to the sounds of the anthem of the United Nation pouring from the speakers. At the head of the United Nation is someone called the Benefactor, who is re-elected annually by the entire population, as a rule, unanimously. The guiding principle of the State is that happiness and freedom are incompatible. A man was happy in the Garden of Eden, but in his recklessness, he demanded freedom and was expelled into the desert. Now the United Nation again granted him happiness, depriving him of freedom.

The novel "1984" is the pinnacle of George Orwell. The novel describes a world divided between three totalitarian states. The book is about complete control, the destruction of all humanity and attempts to survive in a world of hate. It shows a society in which people are divided into classes: upper, privileged, party elite; the average, who has no right to anything, who is under the constant eye of cameras and listening devices, deprived of communication and emotions, doing the mechanical work of regularly rewriting history, deprived of everything; the lower is like the proletariat. In this society, any thought is terminated; a person lives in fear of punishment, which will inevitably follow any wrongdoing. Such a society destroys everything human in man. In order for a person to think less, the language is degraded, books and newspapers are rewritten, denunciation, betrayal, even of relatives are encouraged. There is nothing sacred and, therefore, nothing to live for. The novel has been repeatedly censored by the socialist countries. It has been banned in the USSR.

"Fahrenheit 451" - Ray Bradbury's science fiction dystopian novel, published in 1953. The novel describes American society in the near future, in which books are banned; "Firefighters", which include the protagonist Guy Montag, burn any books found. During the novel, Montag becomes disillusioned with the ideals of the society of which he is a part, becomes an outcast, and joins a small underground group whose supporters memorize the texts of books in order to save them for future generations. The title of the book is explained in the epigraph: “Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper ignites and burns.” The book contains many quotes from the works of English-speaking authors of the past (such as William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, and others), as well as several quotes from the Bible

Dystopias affect the most painful problems of society, hyperbolize them, and show the worst option for their development. They are warnings. By the way, some scenarios quite even come true ...

Mekezhanov Yerassyl librarian of the Department of the International Book