How to end a dystopia...

[Captain Obvious]

...and refrain from hijacking threads.

 

For those who aren't turned off by the official Hero Universe timeline' date=' or maybe even for some who are, but see the dark years of the cyber age as a limited term thing, how do you see the cyber age ending and future history eventually brightening as Mankind heads out to the stars?[/quote']

 

The big thing that seems to make a difference is the advent of cheap interplanetary space travel. That allows the movement of heavy industry out of Earth's environment, bleeds off some population, and creates a influx of wealth that revitalises Earth's economy while sweeping away the established power of the particularly evil corporations.

 

Secondary to that, is the creation of some kind of more or less democratic planetary government with enough muscle to slap around particularly abusive corporations.

 

But who controls the cheap interplanetary space travel if not the corps? And how does a democratic planetary government get established when the corps and their lobbyists control all the existing national governments?

 

Your ideas are sound in and of themselves, but there's still somewhat of a disconnect in there.

 

So does anyone else have any ideas?

[FenrisUlf]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

I'm not sure, but I believe that the 'official' line is that the cyberpunk period was artifically maintained by Duchess Industries (who became a corporate VIPER after the supers went away). After several decades, a group of heroes exposes the truth about DI and brings it all crashing down. A few years later, the Interstellar Age starts and humanity never looks back.

 

Personally, I like to think that some elderly former heroes lasted just long enough to help the new generation of humanity's champions bring Duchess down and get us off this rock. It'd be a nice finish to Defender/whatever his first name is Harmon's career.

[Manic Typist]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

A common theme in all chaning periods. The powerful don't anticipate the full effects of the new technologies they introduce, the masses grow more and more powerful and discontented, and then a revolution occurs.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

A common theme in all chaning periods. The powerful don't anticipate the full effects of the new technologies they introduce' date=' the masses grow more and more powerful and discontented, and then a revolution occurs.[/quote']

 

This one requires a little more detail, please. Obviously, the powerful are going to (largely successfully) limit the cutting-edge military/police tech to themselves only. It doesn't take much introspection to realize that MetalStorm weapons in the hands of a bunch of pissed-off have-nots is going to end in a revolution, so the haves are going to put a lot of value in seeing that that doesn't happen.

 

So, what kind of technologies can be underestimated by the powerful, and used effectively by the underclasses?

 

I don't expect an airtight argument here, since this sort of thing can vary wildly from game world to game world. Just ideas that will pass a casual "common sense" test.

[Erkenfresh]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Perhaps a gradual change in the government replaces corrupt senators and presidents with very good intentioned people. The new government places heavy taxes on MegaCorps and bolsters a neutral police force that will enforce crimes committed by the MegaCorps. "Cyberpunks" are increasingly imprisoned by the new police and go extinct, finding it pays off to have an honest job instead. With the lack of illegal espoinage, the MegaCorps have to make an honest living which they don't know how to do, and they topple. Without MegaCorps making cyberware and no cyberpunks needing to buy cyberware, cyberware goes extinct as well.

 

Only new corporations with fresh, legal ideas flourish but they can do so without fierce competition from MegaCorps.

 

Cyberpunks are out, cyberware is gone, and MegaCorps are bankrupt. In it's place are lots of smaller businesses with a high variety of new ideas which advance science quickly towards the interstellar age.

 

Does that sound feasible?

[Manic Typist]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

This one requires a little more detail, please. Obviously, the powerful are going to (largely successfully) limit the cutting-edge military/police tech to themselves only. It doesn't take much introspection to realize that MetalStorm weapons in the hands of a bunch of pissed-off have-nots is going to end in a revolution, so the haves are going to put a lot of value in seeing that that doesn't happen.

 

So, what kind of technologies can be underestimated by the powerful, and used effectively by the underclasses?

 

I don't expect an airtight argument here, since this sort of thing can vary wildly from game world to game world. Just ideas that will pass a casual "common sense" test.

 

 

Sorry, I'm a bit tired, so I will have to go into specifics later, but here is the gist: any technologies that increase the capacities of the citizens. A bit vague, I know. For example, communicaitions technologies, which allows subversive ideas and knowledge of injustices to spread, unhindered. Medical technology, which increases the longevity of the people and increases their overall resistance to their environment, allowing them to be healthy enough and energetic enough to consider overthrowing their oppressors. Time saving devices- anything that lets them to complete the work they need to do in order to stay alive, in less time, will also grant them more leisure time. They will come to expect more from life and have more time to contemplate their situation. This is bad for those in power, as their increased demands will make them aware of how little they already have, and even more so if those in power try to curtail these demands. Anything that allows more individuals to prosper, privately, in the economic sphere. There's nothing like a new middle class emerging from the lower ranks, who have similar economic capacities to those who are in charge but none of the indoctrination or loyalty to the status quo.

 

Does that help some?

[tgrandjean]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Hmmm... Well, a few quick ideas...

1) Access to communication systems; ie: the net. New veneus give the initial impulse to develop as it means more revenue as well as a new area to market to. However, as we have noticed with the net, it's exceeding difficult to monitor and censor. The truth does find it's way out. It's easy to distort, but impossible to hide.

2) Cheap power. Increased citizen mobility makes it more difficult to track individual citizens.

3) Crash and burn. Disaster focuses the survivors to do what it takes to live. There is a massive reallignment of values.

 

Ack. I need sleep.

[LoresLost]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

The technology that makes interplanetary/intersteller travell cheap would in part allow for some form of von Neuman machine (a self replacating space travelling device he described, not his computing machine) This would lead self reparing mini-factories/replactor type devices that create the tech that would allow communities to function. This leads to automous comunities that not only does not need goverment, they don't need the megacorp that built the device. This would lead to a break down of the Mega-Corp social order and be replaced with a community centric model (Techno - Fuedalism) This would 'slowly' rebuild to more healthy civic minded larger goverment.

 

And why would Mega Corps build such devices, to keep the masses happy and complient with toys and trinkets and revenue form royalties would keep much of the cash flow from the raw materials they sell and allow them to collect money with out producing any thing, or so they think. In other words they will hang them self with their own rope (to parapharse Marx, and no I am not a commie, but greed is often totally self destroying, in the long run).

 

This might lead to a Traveller type universe where the Mega Corps rule the intersteller comunity but allow total automony on the worlds.

[David Johnston]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Well the truth is, being a wicked corporation isn't terribly cost effective any more than being a superbenevolent corporation. A corporation run by an early years of Smallville Lex Luthor or even Henry Ford will tend to get the upper hand over a Duchess Industries if it can just survive the early vulnerable years. And elected politicians would rather take corporate money for policies that won't honk off their constituencies than the ones that do, particularly if their constituency is starting to riot. Perhaps the most important job, though, would be making sure that the bad guy corporations can't subvert electoral processes so the politicians really are elected.

[ghost-angel]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Haven't read everything so I'm sure I'm repeating info....

 

As interplanetary travel occurs, colinzation does as well. Initially I'm sure the overbearing Corps will control it. But an increasingly annoyed and empowered population will change that.

 

Insert a lot of bloodshed, mayhem and revolutionary talk....

 

Then some colonies break off, forming pseudo-states and governments. Trick is, now they control resources that the Corps need to continue. So they actually form Trade Connections instead of just owning it all outright. Eventually the Earth gets the idea that these Corps really aren't that great.

 

Insert some more bloodshed, mayhem and revolutionary talk....

 

Earth reforms true gorvernments that now deal politically with the Space Colonies.. the Corps are just that again - companies providing services and goods and not controlling the population as they did during the Dystopian Age.

 

Move along that route far enough and small governments merge to make big governments, and humanity spreads outward to enventually create the Terran Empire.

[Tamashii2000]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

This one requires a little more detail, please. Obviously, the powerful are going to (largely successfully) limit the cutting-edge military/police tech to themselves only. It doesn't take much introspection to realize that MetalStorm weapons in the hands of a bunch of pissed-off have-nots is going to end in a revolution, so the haves are going to put a lot of value in seeing that that doesn't happen.

 

So, what kind of technologies can be underestimated by the powerful, and used effectively by the underclasses?

 

I don't expect an airtight argument here, since this sort of thing can vary wildly from game world to game world. Just ideas that will pass a casual "common sense" test.

 

Sometimes the 'haves' don't catch on that the 'have nots' are angry or the reasons behind them - Otherwise a certian french queen would never have said "let them eat cake" to a rather angry little crowd

[Basil]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

The most important, influencial, and revolutionary new technology is not a new piece of equipment, but a new way of doing things.

 

True, the new way of doing things, if it is really revolutionary, almost always grows out of a new piece of equipment, but it is the new way of doing things that has the power to change the world.

 

The personal computer is a hunk of metal, plastic, etc. The Internet is a new way of spreading information. Which is the real agent of change?

 

The automobile is a hunk of metal, etc. The family drive-in-the-country, the family vacation, the need to build and maintain highways, smog, "parking" (aka foreplay/sex in a car), indeed "teenager" as a category of person, were all new ways of dealing with people and the world. They all came about because of (relatively) cheap cars, but they all had effects well beyond the mere automobile. And only the very wisest forsaw pollution and loss of land to highways. None of the rest of it was foreseen; it came as a surprise just how totally society was changed by the automobile.

 

A new technology of the "new way of doing things" sort will be hard or impossible to predict. It will also have an enormous impact, and the more rigid the society/"government" the more damage it will sustain. A really big shift in the way things are done will knock over the megacorps.

 

So the question for the writer of "future history" is---what's the totally unforseen change?

[ghost-angel]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Sometimes the 'haves' don't catch on that the 'have nots' are angry or the reasons behind them - Otherwise a certian french queen would never have said "let them eat cake" to a rather angry little crowd

Technically... she never said that - total myth.

[Tarek]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Yes, but it does prove the point... the slander that was attributed to her is still being taught as historical fact.

 

Corporations are powerful, but the 'cyberpunk' era will die when individuals network together and become something more powerful, in political, social, and economic terms.

 

Look at the underlying assumptions on how the 'cyberpunk' era came to be in the first place, and look at how fragile the underlying social structure is that supports the 'Big Corporations are Gods' mentality.

 

Generally, the big thing that will break the 'cyberpunk' era is this: cheap, abundant resources. With so much raw material coming down the gravity well, no one corporation can control all of it, and the resulting economic boom will cause some corporations to fail and new ones to be started. And those new ones will drive laws into place that benefit them and cripple the old corporate structures, as the politicians flock to the new 'golden goose.'

 

For example, a new asteroid mining corporation opens up. It needs people to work for it, and buys off a few key politicians to put through a small change in SIN controls, allowing anyone who wants to work for them, offworld, to break their current corporate contracts without penalty.

 

Imagine the kind of changes that one act would have in a cyberpunk world...

[ghost-angel]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Yes' date=' but it does prove the point... the slander that was attributed to her is still being taught as historical fact.[/quote']

I'm not sure it's taught so much as it has become "common knowledge."

 

point still stands however.

[Jaxom]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Obviously, the powerful are going to (largely successfully) limit the cutting-edge military/police tech to themselves only. It doesn't take much introspection to realize that MetalStorm weapons in the hands of a bunch of pissed-off have-nots is going to end in a revolution, so the haves are going to put a lot of value in seeing that that doesn't happen.

 

Heck, sure there are going to be lots of people invested in keeping MetalStorm out of the hands of the unwashed masses... The problem is that it takes only one.

 

Interstellar space-flight was developed to serve the corporations and after one generation of even more lucrative business using the tech, along comes BOB. BOB is whoever you want him to be from whatever corporation makes sense at the time. He looks at things and says to himself, "I could have a whole world to myself, with all the resources, but why be greedy. There's plenty to go around and heck, I'm probably going to be able to keep myself in a position of power and privilege but so many other people could have so much more without any noticible cost to myself." BOB starts providing war materials to the plebs, preferrably the plebs working for someone else and supports them in an uprising.

 

Maybe BOB is doing this because he really has the interests of humanity at hear. Maybe he is doing this because when you are two planets away a bunch of plebs with heavy weapons making life difficult for your adversaries sounds like a sound political idea. Of course, the US has exercised foreign policy like that for years... Training Osama bin Ladin to fight is great while he is fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. But when that is finished somehow his plans might change or evolve and he's still got the training and whatever weapons are still left (or he can still get his hands on).

 

So BOB, for whatever reason, supports a revolt by the masses. Maybe across known space, maybe only in a limited region. He supplies them with weaponry and they win. Now all you have to do is figure out what kind of government(s) evolve to your final state. Maybe you start a galactic communism like the Federation. Maybe you go back to elected representation or "city-states" or trade federations or who knows what. Maybe you go through one massive transformation (why are a bunch of cyberpunk street-runners developing this kind of "enlightened" government) or maybe you go through a series of successivly more peaceful and enlightened states to get there.

 

 

[added in editting to address some earlier comments]

The reason I point this out is that once you reach a sufficient level of technology, the have-nots can never compete. It is simply too difficult to overcome the gap in weaponry without external help. Even in the situation where some company comes up with something like asteroid mining, first the odds are that it is a big corp (i.e. those with the resources to do the research or to steal it and sabotage the opposition). Second, the company that comes into power is going to establish something just as rigid and self-serving so you have only traded one corporate structure for another and one that is probably no kinder or gentler.

 

Look at it this way... In most cyberpunk playing, corps tend to give an incredible amount of power to the runners... Sometimes it's data or programs, maybe arms, who knows. But without the backing of a major corp nobody in cyberpunk is going to think of trying to go after another major corp. There's no chance of success.

[Wolf1066]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Dystopias and dictatorships always fall - many that were have already fallen; all those that currently are, will fall. Sooner or later the people at or near "the bottom" decide they've had enough abd the result is often bloody revolution - not always, but often.

 

I have ideas that the cyberpunk world I set my campaigns in will eventually fall to blood and fire - netrunners, edgerunners and street scum alike will rise up and bring the megacorps to their knees, expect to see guys in Armani suits kicking on the end of a rope flung over the nearest street lamp. Corporate security may or may not be effective ("how much did you say we were paying our guards?") and electronic security isn't worth a cup of cold snot if your mainframe's been breached and the "rabble" now controls all your doors.

 

"Agent of Chaos" by Norman Spinrad is an excellent story of the fall of a dystopic regime and promotes the idea of "Social Entropy" as the reason - the more Draconian the regime, the more energy is required to maintain it. Eventually, the system gets to the point that The Powers That Be can no longer afford to maintain control - because it is a "closed system" with no more "energy" (money, manpower, resources) coming in from "outside".

 

Opening up new avenues (interstallar travel, asteroid mining) may well serve to extend the dystopia as TPTB (corps, Supreme Lord and Dictator, whoever) will have a new source of "energy" to bolster the flagging resouces "at home" or it may cripple it by suddenly increasing the area over which the requisite level of control must be applied ("WTF! It costs how much to send troops to Io?")

 

I also try to factor in Niven's Law (f*s=k or "the product of freedom and security is a constant") - improve either to the detriment of the other. OK, the "constant" varies from regime to regime but for any given regime, if you increase people's security, you're going to take away their freedoms (like the "Patriot Act") if you increase their freedom you'll make them "free to be mugged, raped and murdered on the street-corner of their choice", an entirely different sort of dystopia.

 

When the dystopia falls, what takes its place? Is it any better than what was before? Are the people any more free or have they merely changed masters? Were the French truly any better under the "Glorious Republic" and "Madame la Guillotine" than they were under the King and "les Aristos"? Were the Russians truly any worse off under the hereditary Czar than they were under the self-appointed Czars that replaced him?

 

So the down-trodden (or at least, those who perceive themselves to be down-trodden) will rise up to smite [those they believe to be] their oppressors, "streets will run red" etc and there will be a power vaccuum and a period of confusion while everyone gets sorted out and there will be a new regime - which may or may not be more benevolent than the previous. In the interim, there will probably be a lot of bloodshed in the wake of the revolution - competing factions, general lawlessness etc.

[UltraRob]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November...

 

In theory, social stresses build up, someone or something provides a spark, and pop goes the revolution!

 

There is another possibility, of course, which is prosperity. Cheap energy, lots of jobs, or other factors listed by people above can just plain make jobs plentiful over time. The economy goes up and people go up with it, upwardly mobile people demand change and with their now power they get it.

 

Also, how about an idea? Ideas can change society, it's happened many times in the past and will happen again. A change in social philosophy can result in dramatic change to remake the world for the better.

 

Rob

[bigdamnhero]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

See, this is one of my problems with the metaverse timeline: 4-color Champions stories and dystopian cyberpunk stories just do not exist in the same universes. Each genre makes radically different fundamental assumptions about human nature and the power of the individual. I don’t see such basic “universal†laws changing just because “the magic goes away.†Maybe that’s just me.

 

Regarding the question at hand, there are basically two ways to go:

1) “We evolve out of it†as proposed by Erkenfresh and others, or

2) “We claw our way out of it†as proposed by ghost-angel and others.

 

Pick the one you think is more likely and/or more dramatic. Personally, I see the latter as having far more gaming potential, and a lot more room for a band of plucky heroes to influence the course of events.

 

After several decades' date=' a group of heroes exposes the truth about DI and brings it all crashing down.[/quote']

My pet peeve with most “Dystopia’s End†stories is the ease with which the totalitarian regime is finally toppled. The Heroes blow up a few buildings, air a couple of Truth broadcasts, and Voila! the dictatorship topples. If totalitarian regimes were really that fragile, the breed would’ve gone extinct long ago. That’s not to say that individuals can’t effect change – far from it. (Especially in heroic fiction/RPGs!) But the way it’s typically handled is far too cheap and easy. It going to take more than one scandal.

 

2) Cheap power. Increased citizen mobility makes it more difficult to track individual citizens.

I think this is a key point. Historically, as people’s mobility has increased it has been harder and harder for governments to maintain control. This would seem to apply to corporate control as well. Particularly if FTL travel is developed before FTL communications, any Earth-based organization is going to have difficulty enforcing it’s will on distant worlds. And cheap energy is going to make all the difference, especially if/when we reach the point where every house generates its own power, largely taking government out of the equation. (Some folks think we'll reach that day in our lifetime, but that's another subject.)

 

The reason I point this out is that once you reach a sufficient level of technology' date=' the have-nots can never compete. It is simply too difficult to overcome the gap in weaponry without external help. [/quote']

While I agree with most of your post, I’m going to have to quibble with you on this point. Recent history is chock full of techno-haves getting their butts handed to them by techno-have-nots. In fact far from becoming less frequent, this seems to have become more common as tech level increases. When all we had was swords and bows, it was easy for a warlord to keep the populace in line; once every peasant has an AK-47 buried in his backyard, things get trickier. Not to go all NRA or anything but as the saying goes: “God made men; Sam Colt made them equal.â€

 

Remember that appellations like “haves†and “have-nots†are always relative; the “have-nots†of most cyberpunk settings are far better equipped than today’s best Special Forces units. Sure, the Corps have more and better, but that’s always the case everywhere. In such a world, it’s easy to see the Powers That Be thinking “We control space ships, orbital fortresses, and planet-buster nukes; what do we need to worry about a bunch of street-thugs with cybernetic implants and wet-ware? Hey, who’s that knocking on the door?†Wouldn’t be the first time.

[David Johnston]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Well the trick is waiting until it's ready to fall. Usually that's when the old guard who first established it are well in their grave, and the successing regime has lost cohesion and the financial viability to keep their troops paid. But the typical Cyberpunk RPG dystopia is not a totalitarian regime in the first place. It is, if anything anarchic but not the nice "we all just get along together and reasonably work out our issues" kind of anarchy. The companies themselves maintain a nigh-totalitarian hold on their actual property but they let the world outside their property go to heck.

[Wolf1066]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Well the trick is waiting until it's ready to fall. Usually that's when the old guard who first established it are well in their grave' date=' and the successing regime has lost cohesion and the financial viability to keep their troops paid. But the typical Cyberpunk RPG dystopia is not a totalitarian regime in the first place. It is, if anything anarchic but not the nice "we all just get along together and reasonably work out our issues" kind of anarchy. The companies themselves maintain a nigh-totalitarian hold on their actual property but they let the world outside their property go to heck.[/quote']

I'd agree with that. It is not a dictatorship of the Mao Tse Tung/Josef Stalin type where the troops are loyal to a central body. It's a bunch of often-competing businesses who only agree with each other when it comes to lobbying for mutually beneficial legislation (i.e. they'll work together to get a bill that allows them to sack a person on basis of any trumped up excuse because that's in their own best interests) but Duchess Industries is not going to send out their troops to help Arasaka (to mix universes a trifle...) because frankly, it's not their problem.

 

The fall of a Cyberpunk dystopia would be different to that of a Dictatorship dystopia.

[Wolf1066]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

My pet peeve with most “Dystopia’s End†stories is the ease with which the totalitarian regime is finally toppled. The Heroes blow up a few buildings' date=' air a couple of Truth broadcasts, and [i']Voila![/i] the dictatorship topples. If totalitarian regimes were really that fragile, the breed would’ve gone extinct long ago. That’s not to say that individuals can’t effect change – far from it. (Especially in heroic fiction/RPGs!) But the way it’s typically handled is far too cheap and easy. It going to take more than one scandal.

There, as in the here and now, the "Golden Rule" applies: "Those with the gold make the rules." The rich powerful person/company has the resources to make the scandal - and anyone making too much noise about it - "vanish".

 

I fully agree. Any dystopia's end is going to take major work and the period immediately afterwards is going to be unstable and fraught with danger. A couple of "Truth broadcasts" and demolished buildings and "peace reigns before tea time" does not cut it.

 

It's hard to see how a Cyberpunk dystopia could do anything but degenerate further into anarchy of the realistic sort (as opposed to the "humans are basically nice and will all get along fine without rules" sort) without some one exerting a universal order to bring Corps, Netrunners Street Trash and Edgerunners alike into line. Sure, you can topple the power-base of a few Corps, but all of them? So maybe you target the biggest and most corrupt. What then happens in the streets? Especially when all those Edgerunners lose the very Corps that manufacture their cyberware? It'd become more like the Post Apocalyptic dystopias where people are warring over scrap metal and functioning cyberware because the manufacturers would be gone or the smaller Corps that were scarcely able to compete with the giants would rise up to fill the demand and in so doing probably become just as corrupt as the giants were.

 

To end an Anarchy dystopia you need to enforce a regime, to end a Dictatorship dystopia you need to topple a regime.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

To end an Anarchy dystopia you need to enforce a regime, to end a Dictatorship dystopia you need to topple a regime.

 

Most cyberpunk I've come across is a mixture of both. The corps have their areas where their production facilities are and their workers live, and they maintain security with an iron fist, ostensibly to keep out the anarchic gangsters destroying the rest of the city. So which works here?

 

It occurs to me that a couple of those companies that encourage employee happiness (flexible scheduling, profit sharing, etc) could be a decent focus for change. They would be interested in maintaining security for their employees without creating a Big Brother atmosphere, and would probably counter-lobby whatever figurehead governments remain to undo a lot of the socially detrimental measures that the corps have pushed for.

 

Just the germ of an idea, I guess. Where these socially aware companies come from out of the cyber-cesspool needs to be determined, and how they stay in business with the evil oligarchs trying to maintain their own market share.

[Wolf1066]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

Most cyberpunk I've come across is a mixture of both. The corps have their areas where their production facilities are and their workers live' date=' and they maintain security with an iron fist, ostensibly to keep out the anarchic gangsters destroying the rest of the city. So which works here?[/quote']

 

Aliens invade and enslave the entire Earth (and all orbital facilities) Corps and rabble alike, applying laws all humans must obey irrespective of "position"?

 

Within a Corp, I don't see the workers rebelling against the dictatorial Board of Directors etc as their own accommodation, food and money comes from that corp. If they fail, they'd face (at the very least) dismissal which would put them out into the anarchy of the streets struggling to survive, if they succeed they'd have to run the Corp in pretty much the way it was in order to compete (and assuming their crap conditions were a matter of fiscal expediency, they wouldn't be able to afford to improve the workers' lot) or they'd wind up out of business and out in the streets struggling to survive...

[FenrisUlf]

Re: How to end a dystopia...

 

 

My pet peeve with most “Dystopia’s End†stories is the ease with which the totalitarian regime is finally toppled. The Heroes blow up a few buildings, air a couple of Truth broadcasts, and Voila! the dictatorship topples. If totalitarian regimes were really that fragile, the breed would’ve gone extinct long ago. That’s not to say that individuals can’t effect change – far from it. (Especially in heroic fiction/RPGs!) But the way it’s typically handled is far too cheap and easy. It going to take more than one scandal.

 

 

 

Well, the impression I have is that there were other forces working behind the scenes against DI (like Harmon Industries, apparently the other major corporate player) and possiby several governments. So it wasn't 'just one bunch of rebels', it was a rather larger group.

 

But yeah, the 'we killed the Emperor/Chairman/Premier, now let freedom reign!' finish seems a bit too quick and easy to me too.