Another Word For Dystopia

They kicked in the door. Your wife screamed. A few of them were wearing white lab coats as if they were doctors. The world was behaving in ways you wouldn’t have believed possible a short while ago. With a “doctor” on each side, and people in neighboring apartments covertly watching, you were hustled down the stairs and across the street and into an ambulance. To this day, no one will talk about what might have become of you. Everything is either too hot or too cold; nothing is soft. Prepubescent girls have dreams eight feet high and made of steel.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest full-length poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in early 2021 from Thirty West

A Beginner’s Guide To Dystopia

From the street outside, a loudspeaker boomed, “According to the decree of the 17th of this month on the Abolition of Walls.” I got up from the table where I was reading and went over to the window. Banners with the slogan “Public Interest Comes Before Self-Interest” fluttered in endless repetition down the street. Practically right under my window, officers were clubbing a man who lay crumpled on the pavement. I sighed, then went and sat back down and found my place in the book – sea nymphs with red seaweed hair were sunning themselves on the ledges of seaside cliffs.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of THE DEATH ROW SHUFFLE, a poetry collection forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

To The Sci-fi Gazette

The SciFi Gazette--shining beacon of non-cliché speculative fiction. Submission guidelines had listed discouraged themes; ‘dystopias’ were number one: bad news for a pessimist like myself.

The state of the world sank home for me when The Gazette’s most hackneyed theme changed to ‘utopias.’ Still, they never published my bleak predictions.

I’d intended to kick down the door, but it already hung on its hinges. Scattered papers decorated shattered furniture. I luckily bagged a tatty anthology edition for later reading.

The editor was, of course, not there. On her desk, I deposited my latest story. I had high hopes--my first utopia.

From Guest Contributor Tris Matthews