Tolstoy wrote in ANNA KARENINA: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” He may not have had the benefit of contemporary Dystopian fiction, but I do, and I will borrow his edict, with a difference:
All Dystopia are alike; yet all Dystopias are different.
I believe this to be accurate in fact (witness, for example, Chairman Mao' s China, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet, Pol Pot' s Cambodia, Pinochet' s Chile; not to mention Franco's Spain, and North Korea. All are alike, yet all are different. )
The same is true in fiction; think how DIVERGENT or MONUMENT 19 differ from the Dystopian classics: A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ; ALAS, BABYLON; ON THE BEACH; BRAVE NEW WORLD. And here in FIRST (#1 in LIVE ONCE trillogy), somewhat the same (death, near-starvation, servant status for most, providing for the ruling oligarchy. I must say that the nomenclature and dystopian structure used in this novel does ring remembrance for me with the tenets of a certain highly-populated religious institution.
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