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and regulations, meaning that it “is a compromise” (ibid.) between generic conventions, reader expectations, and the writers’ urge to create something new. Properties of genres are, according to Ansgar Nünning and Astrid Erll, “elements of cultural memory and as such belong to the common knowledge of societies, which individuals acquire through socialization and culturalization” (17), meaning that readers have a fine sense for genre literature and concomitant elements. These conventions may not be underestimated since they “steer the reading process” (Wesseling quoted in ibid.) and therefore the expectations of readers.

      Of course, one must always keep in mind that genres are contingent constructs, that is, cognitive maps based on artificial categories created by literary scholars. However, as Richard Taylor states, “[w]ith a clear understanding of existing categories a student of literature is better able to recognise essential characteristics and place individual works in relation to others of the same kind” (40).1 Emphasising the “essential characteristics” of genres, this quote presupposes a normative understanding of genres. Yet, scholars should be aware that there can never be a ‘right’ or ‘truthful’ definition of any genre, since genres are always the product of cultural discussion (cf. Zymner 10). Every new addition to an existing genre stimulates a dialectical process of renegotiating genre boundaries. As Suvin maintains, “[l]iterary genres exist in historically precise and curious ecological units, interacting and intermixing, imitating and cannibalizing each other” (Metamorphoses 21). Genres are therefore to be understood as abstract organisms that adapt to their environments and are subject to change, re-evaluation, and modification with every new work of fiction that is added to an existing canon (cf. Abraham 43). The canon must therefore offer “durable frames of reference [to] accommodate change: the variations in plot, characterisation or setting in each imitation inflect the audiences’ generic expectations by introducing new elements or transgressing old ones” (Maltby quoted in K. Williams 137f.), yet stay true to a more abstract generic core.

      Utopian writing is born at the crossroads of various genres: it is related, first and foremost, to both Science Fiction and post-apocalyptic writing, exchanging stock features, character constellations, as well as themes and symbols and thereby increasing the difficulty to differentiate between the genres.2 To achieve maximum precision in the analysis of current dystopian fiction, it is vital to initiate this project with an exploration of the factors that distinguish the three genres, before clarifying the generic convention surrounding the concepts ‘utopia,’ ‘eutopia,’ and ‘dystopia.’ This necessary but difficult categorisation provides the basis for a nuanced investigation into the agenda of contemporary dystopian fiction.

      Utopia, Science Fiction, and Post-Apocalypse

      With his observations that dystopias appear “often in connection with science fictional and/or apocalyptic scenarios” (79), Rüdiger Heinze hints at the great generic confusion surrounding utopia’s relationship to science fiction – a nexus Darko Suvin captured under the term ‘literature of cognitive estrangement.’ Often dismissed as trivial and unserious literature, Suvin explores in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction the ways in which science fiction is “capable of achieving profound and probing insights into the principal dilemmas of political life” (Paik 1). He differentiates between naturalistic and estranged fiction, extending from the “ideal extreme of exact recreation of the author’s empirical environment to exclusive interest in a strange newness” (Suvin, Metamorphoses 4). Consequently, he groups together those genres working within the mode of estrangement (a device similar to the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt) calling it “an organon […] for exploring the novum” (cf. ibid. ix). This is where utopia, “both an independent aunt and a dependent daughter of sf” (Suvin, “Theses” 188; cf. also Paik 3), comes together with science fiction. Both provide “a shocking and distancing mirror above the all too familiar reality” (Suvin, Metamorphoses 54). At the same time, science fiction and utopia are as fully “opposed to supernatural or metaphysical estrangement as [they are] to naturalism or empiricism” (ibid. 7), thereby erecting a barrier to other genres such as the Fantastic and the Gothic. Furthermore, both, utopia and science fiction, are interested in the present although they are set in the future (cf. Gold quoted in Amis 64).

      As close as utopian writing is to its “niece and mother” science fiction, so undoubted is its kinship to another future-oriented genre, namely post-apocalyptic fiction (cf. Schoßböck 61; also Berger 9). Dystopia has much in common with post-apocalyptic fiction since both adapt, shape, and express fears and anxieties and “put forward a total critique of any existing social order” (Berger 7). Yet, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives mainly focus on the “imagination of disaster” (Sontag quoted in Booker and Thomas 53); or to be more precise, natural and man-made phenomena that bring mankind to the brink of extinction. Eckart Voigts talks about the disclosing quality of (post-)apocalyptic fiction, hinting at the original meaning of the Greek word ‘ἀποκαλύπτω’ (‘apokalypto,’ meaning ‘to uncover,’ cf. “Introduction” 5; cf. also Ketterer 5). Just like the biblical Book of Revelation, commonly referred to as ‘The Apocalypse,’ post-apocalyptic fiction often indulges in portrayals of Ulrich Beck’s ‘icons of destruction,’ “[n]uclear disaster, genetic engineering and ecological catastrophe” (Beck quoted in Lindner 374). Widely thought to have originated with Mary Shelley’s bleak last man standing narrative The Last Man (1826), post-apocalyptic fiction has particularly flourished in the nuclear age and after (atomic) pollution threatened the environment.3 Despite having been already declared dead, post-apocalyptic fiction still appeals to audiences around the world (cf. Mousoutzanis 461; cf. also Horn 12ff.) – especially on screen: while post-apocalyptic novels are again found on international best-seller lists (e.g. Emily St. Mandel’s Station Eleven, 2015; Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower, 2000; or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, 2007), it is first and foremost TV-series like The Walking Dead, (2010–), blockbuster movies like The Day After Tomorrow (2004, directed by Roland Emmerich) or I am Legend (2008, directed by Francis Lawrence) and computer games such as The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) or – most recently – Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt RED, 2020) that fascinate millions of fans.

      Striking, however, is that most post-apocalyptic fiction – other than dystopian fiction, for instance – does not work directly within the mode of extrapolating from the present. As Susanna Layh observes, most end time narratives from the late 20^th century do not establish clearly identifiable causal-logical links between the pre- and post-apocalyptic society, but rather rely on general themes such as diseases and pandemic viruses as well as natural disasters such as earthquakes, flooding, or meteoric impacts (cf. 181). Thereby they ignore the search for explanations how the present could possibly turn into this future and thereby force the reader to direct her attention away from the search for causality towards the diagnosis of human relationships after the catastrophe (ibid.; see also Schoßböck 65, 85–96).4

      Despite their difference in interest and objective, post-apocalyptic fiction and dystopias are often mixed up and mistaken for each other, especially in the context of mainstream media. Even Margaret Atwood, acclaimed author of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, conflates the two genres: in an interview, she once said “[a]ll dystopias are telling you is to make sure you’ve got a lot of canned goods and a gun” (Interview with Higgins), thereby falsely attributing some sort of eschatological quality to dystopian fiction. Kunkel tries to formulate the differences between the two genres by hinting at the nature of the future described: on the one hand, “[t]he end of the world or apocalypse typically brings about the collapse of order; dystopia, on the other hand, envisions a sinister perfection of order. […] dystopia is a nightmare of authoritarian or totalitarian rule, while the end of the world is a nightmare of anarchy” (“Dystopia” 90, emphasis in the original). He thus correctly identifies the nature of “order” in the two respective societies as the defining element.

      Defining Utopia, Eutopia, and Dystopia

      Although most people seem to have an intuitive understanding about the relational characteristics of eutopian and dystopian writing, these concepts are notoriously difficult to pin down in practice. This is due to two reasons in particular: their linguistic status as neologisms, and their generic co-dependency. In order to approach

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