Before beginning to explore this topic, it is vital to have clear definitions of what both utopia and dystopia are. Unfortunately, it is difficult to pin down exact definitions of these two words.
Thomas More, in his 1518 book Utopia, originally conceived the term, although not the actual concept - many philosophers would say that the concept of utopia is something inherent to the human psyche. The idea of utopia, even in literature, is far older than More's romance; it appears in the Timaeus of Plato and is fully developed in his Republic. The idealized description of Sparta in Plutarchs life of Lycurgus belongs to the same class of literary Utopias, though it professes to be historical. A similar idea also occurs in legends of worldwide currency, the best known of these being the Greek, and the medieval Norse, Celtic and Arab legends that describe an earthly Paradise in the Western or Atlantic Ocean. In More's work, Utopia was an imaginary island that enjoyed the greatest perfection in its social, moral and political aspects. So, put very simply, utopia is any place or state of ideal perfection. However, we can also regard utopia as more than just a concept, it is also a literary genre, the same as dystopia.
Dystopia is the antonym of utopia, so the simple definition of the word would be the opposite of utopia i.e. a place or state far removed from ideal perfection. However, this is far too vague a definition; it could describe many areas of the world today. The word usually denotes a hypothetical society that is significantly worse than our own. Dystopian images are almost invariably images of future society, pointing fearfully at the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction. A very useful definition is given by the Wikipedia Online Dictionary:.
"A dystopia is any society considered to be undesirable, for any of a number of reasons.
