Share an example of a Utopian or Dystopian Society:
Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras - The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
This series provides a distinctly dystopic view of the future of civilization as imagined by Scott Westerfeld. In the first book, Uglies, he depicts a seemingly perfect city in which technology has advanced to the point of creating hovercars, hoverboards, there are no diseases, and everyone's happy. The entire city has been confined to a square grid that must be less than 10 miles wide on each side and is further broken up by distinct differences in the city-scape. Parents and their children are separate from grandparents (who they call "crumblies"), the pre-teens are known as "uglies" and are just in view of the "pretties" who basically party all day and night. However, there are other issues that lie beyond the disassociation that is evident with this separation of the generations. The "uglies" undergo a surgery process once they turn 15 to become a "pretty" and get a few genetic upgrades as well. While the surgery gives them unbreakable bones, flawless skin, and symmetrical features, it also inserts a tumor in the brain that limits independent thought (although certain professions like doctors and the rangers/police don't have it). This tumor is what keeps the individuals submissive and willing to no longer explore their full potential, but instead go through life placidly following the general criteria. Just beyond the edge of the city's borders, the old city-scape and rusted-out skeletons of sky-scrapers remain, apparently frozen in time. Rusted-out cars litter the overgrown streets and hoverboards have to be modified to reach this location. Appropriately, this is known to the kids as the Rusty Ruins.
Long description, but I believe this is a great example of a dystopian society.
Here are some of the different book covers that kind of depict the question of whether or not being "pretty" is an appropriate goal to have.
In the book, there's one girl named Tally Youngblood who beats the system. She meets a Rusty (one who does not live in the modernized city) and follows him to his home - a campsite. The Rusty's parents actually used to be medical officials in one of the cities, but escaped because they were uncomfortable with putting the tumors into people to subdue them. They worked to develop a pill that eradicates the tumor and throughout the course of the rest of the books they distribute the pills to different cities and thereby topple the oppressive government regime, thereby creating a better system along the way (though that system is still not a utopia, I might add).
Here's what my solution would be...
I would probably do the same thing - find a way to eradicate the brain tumor, and then once that solution is found, distribute it to as many cities as possible. The main problem here in this dystopia is that the masses were not aware of the situation they were in - they did not know about the tumors unless it was their job to implant them (or they worked in the government). I would think that there would need to be awareness of what's actually going on, especially when it has to do with brains and the mind's ability to be curious.
