My local bookstore has a teen paranormal romance section that spans 80% of the YA books and spills over into YA nonfiction. They literally could not find enough shelf space for the deluge of brooding, inhuman love interests. The one or two shelves NOT dedicated to paranormal romance are mostly full of dystopias of varying severity. So I’d say you are being quite accurate. From what I’ve seen.

isn’t that thing pretty much porn for middle-aged women

Yipes! DO NOT WANT. And there seems to be a revamped fairy tales trend right now. It annoys me.

And there seems to be a revamped fairy tales trend right now.

Should be better than the rest, since originality is a part, if not all, of the premise.

All romance novels are porn for middle-aged women. Lady Willow does not want to acknowledge her mature place in life.

There are always lots of brooding Novels by earnest young MFAs (or MFA candidates) popping up. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them all.

Here’s my $0.02: I don’t have a problem with a particular genre becoming big and taking over. I don’t even have a problem with most of it being bad. That’s just how literary trends always go. And not all of it is terrible. As an example, the dystopian thing is very popular. But the Hunger Games books are an example where it was done well. So the good stuff is still out there.

What does annoy/disturb me is people (even people who should know better, like people who work in bookstores or educators) who hold up all this stuff as the BEST THANG EVAR, to the detriment of other, more original/out of the mainstream stuff. Or, worse yet, actively discourage other stuff because it’s not the big thing. What was that writing book somebody was sporking before, where the writer essentially counseled the people following his plan to only write novels that fit into genres already out there and popular? That’s a dangerous and annoying attitude, IMO.

P.S. Kinda relevant: Here at Impishidea, what are your thoughts on the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy?

Apparently the BDSM community is really up in arms about it because it doesn’t depict an ethical BDSM relationship — the sub is meant to have all the power (safe words, etc), but in the book he as the dominant tells her what to do about everything. I think it’s a sad reflection of the morals and attitudes we idolise and internalise as a society. And I wish these women would be honest and call it porn, because it is. And then I wish they’d realise that they’re telling the world at large what turns them on. Loudly (the telling, I mean).

As an example, the dystopian thing is very popular. But the Hunger Games books are an example where it was done well. So the good stuff is still out there.

I’m sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree. You can say you liked it, and I won’t disagree with you liking something. Hell, I like Artemis Fowl. I like the idea behind Hunger Games, but I really can’t get behind Hunger Games in terms of its execution.

As for me, I’m not a dystopia fan (the only one I’ve ever really liked was the Uglies trilogy, and I’m not sure it counts as hardcord dystopia), but the latest trend for it only mildly irritates me because when it comes to what I read I mostly ignore the literary trends. I’m still catching up on Discworld and LOTR etc.

I just think that dystopic fiction has become trite and played out. Would be more interesting to see someone write a story that actively set out to be utopic instead.

And then utopic novels will get trite and we’ll move back to dystopic and the cycle repeats again.

I personally doubt that utopic fiction will ever be popular. In my experience, the term ‘utopia’ is too subjective to have a real mass appeal. And because the world is supposed to be perfect, there’s no real possibility for conflict, and thus no real plot. That’s my 2 cents.

I’m pretty sure it’s possible to write a good story about a utopia, but it’d take a great writer to make it work. The setting wouldn’t give you any built-in crutches, and you’d have to make it stand up entirely on your own skill.

Alternatively, a city/country/world/whatever that looks like everything is falling to pieces but is actually working quite well. It would be significantly harder to do since, you know, when things look bad it’s typically because they’re bad, but I think it would be interesting.

On a side note, “utopia” literally means “(most definitely) not a place” if you look at just the Greek roots. The Latin -ia changes “utopia”‘s meaning to “the pathological state of a nonexistent place”.

Well, maybe not really, except -ia is used to describe pathological states.

Since you have shades of dystopias, and dystopias where there are still good people, etc—why can’t you have a utopia where the setting was not the main point of it—some event happening in it, a theme, or the characters are.

Alternately you could have the utopia be threatened by something, and explore the morality of the measures taken to ensure that it is no longer threatened.

Alternatively, a city/country/world/whatever that looks like everything is falling to pieces but is actually working quite well. It would be significantly harder to do since, you know, when things look bad it’s typically because they’re bad, but I think it would be interesting.

This would be cool. Tough, but cool.

Which was Thomas More’s intent, if you ask me.

Which most people are completely unaware of. It’s a bit ironic how far removed the majority of people’s concepts of what a utopia is compared to the word root and intentions have become.

Personally, I want to see a capitalist utopia. Literary utopias are so frequently just upgraded versions of socialist hippie communes.

Well, a lot of socialist principles are reactions to failed or imperfectly-applied capitalism. If the world truly is a utopia, there really wouldn’t be a need for them. I wouldn’t want to see it out of any personal ideology, I just think it would be different and interesting. Might have to read those books you mentioned.