Bacigalupi believes that “stories of broken futures” ring true and appeal to young adults because they know perfectly well that the world is broken or breaking (on a number of levels–he focuses on environmental and energy crises in the essay, but what little I’ve read of his work also deals with economic problems, fundamental inequalities, abuses of power, and how people with power are insulated from the people they’re harming), and they are choosing honest storytelling over “a lie.”

I do agree, as far as that goes. I’ve heard similar arguments before (here is one of my favorite versions), and they feel right. I can still enjoy what’s sometimes called “escapist” fiction, and I can enjoy older, more optimistic works, but dystopian lit appeals to me by first addressing that particular brand of cynical awareness that I’m not sure my parents had as kids. I do, however, think that it’s incomplete: the best dystopian stories begin in that dark, cynical place and bring it round to, if not optimism, then at least some hope–whether that’s a revolution or the characters learning from their or their ancestors’ mistakes and coming together to do better. (Although the Bacigalupi stories I’ve read…don’t. They take their protagonists to the brink of despair, throw one last insurmountable obstacle at them, and end. Or they give the protagonist a stroke of luck that highlights how horrible human beings are to each other, and end.)

I think “The Giver” appeals to a slightly earlier stage in the development of the awareness I mentioned: the point where we’re looking at the world around us and seeing the cracks for the first time. Other dystopias appeal to later stages, where we’ve confirmed and accepted the broken world (and maybe have gotten mired in it, in which case the sort of story that brings us round to hope is especially important). “The Giver” starts from a place of accepting the spotless surface of the world, and shows the process of realizing that it’s not perfect.

Jaclyn Martin