The best dystopian literature is written in response to current events. George Orwell wrote “1984” in 1948, during the peak of Stalinism, and he famously noted that the work is an imagining of “what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.”
Orwell’s Big Brother will surveil your very thoughts, but the veneer of polite Western society will still exist, underscoring the horror just enough to prove totalitarianism can be grounded in civility.
Usually set in the future, these works envision the outcomes of the present. “This is what could happen,” they warn us. We enjoy these works precisely because they speculate about the future, in the same way we enjoy the fantasy genre’s re-imagining of the past — “in a magical world, this is what could have been,” those novels dream.
So what kind of genre literature is being written now? What kind of future can the year 2025, the apotheosis of Trumpism, promise anyone? What horrors await the protagonists of “2052”?
They had it coming
In one version of the year 2038, not too far into our future, books are shredded by government decree, mass communications have collapsed, and all the mothers in Three Rivers, TX, are indentured servants by law at the Big Tex Fish Cannery. Fathers are shipped off to oil rigs in Alaska, and as a consequence of all this, young adults and children roam a wasteland that can be best described as “surreal.”
The future in “Brother Brontë” by Fernando A. Flores, the story of some disbanded punk rockers and their Bengal tiger leading an uprising for the soul of their town, is bleak. It’s not just bleak — its orange sky gives “Blade Runner” vibes, and its feral child gangs evoke “Lord of the Flies.”
Flores is certainly not afraid of employing visceral descriptions to build this world — the rain comes down like slabs of meat from clouds that resemble an “inflating pig bladder, giving birth to the giant moth that would spray its mouth juices onto Three Rivers.”
The author’s flourishes require a slow, deliberate read. But, underneath the stylistic bombardment, Flores delivers a dystopian novel deeply concerned with what will happen as industry-driven communities come up against insatiable corporate demands. There’s a reason Texas Monthly called the book “a novel about Elon Musk’s Texas.”
Flores does not hold back, and it’s clear that “Brother Brontë” is a cautionary tale with a moral for us to heed today, as at the heart of the story Flores weaves is an issue of the present — who decides what stories get told?
All along
Gonzo plot aside, “Brother Brontë” is also a book about writers and their writing persevering in hostile territory. It’s about unearthing the truths that may have been lost.
We worry about the objective truth a lot these days. A too-large-for-my-comfort number of Americans still believe that the elections of 2020 were stolen. Official government websites have deleted the contributions of people of color.
The Secretary of Defense has banned books that deal with uncomfortable history from military installations. We are purging “un-American” ideas from our curriculums, and we blame “the media” for “spinning the narrative,” instead of examining the veracity of what we choose to consume.
The government is interfering with private college syllabi and deporting foreign students who haven’t behaved in silent perfection. News agencies have access to the White House based on their cartography choices. Millions of people around the country believe that they can censor and ban books from public libraries because of their individual concerns.
A quick look at standardized tests over time reveal our decline. We are the least media literate we’ve ever been. Most media consumers cannot tell the difference between an opinion and a fact.
And just today, in response to a query about the government refusing to honor a Supreme Court order to return a man who has committed no crimes from false imprisonment abroad, the president preferred to rewrite the story: “Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ That’s why nobody watches you.”
Two warning shots
There’s a reason that Flores chose to set his book only 13 years into the future instead of Orwell’s prudent 36. We seem to be closer to dystopia than we’d prefer.
Novels like “Brother Brontë” highlight the importance of making sure we get the future right. It’s fitting that Flores grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, born on one side of the border and raised on the other.
I also grew up in the Valley, and I’ve seen how quickly perspectives can shift as one walks over a bridge from one place into another. The better story is one that captures both sides, and that’s something we can easily accomplish by reading broadly — especially the books that give us glimpses into the possibilities we can avoid.
Perhaps this is why I like my speculative fiction set far into the future — I’m not ready for the orange skies and book shredders. All that matters is what we do now. 2038 and 2052 depend on it.
Adriana E. Ramírez’s previous column was “Ed Gainey’s self-defeating campaign.”
First Published: April 14, 2025, 10:32 p.m.
Updated: April 15, 2025, 3:22 p.m.
