Definition of "dystopia" [dystopia]

• An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror. (noun)
• A work describing such a place or state: "dystopias such as Brave New World” ( Times Literary Supplement). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "While the father can still remember pieces of a time before everything turned gray and lifeless, this dystopia is all the son has ever known."
• "I have recently decided that the dystopia is the only "true" form of futuristic sf left because any realistic assessment of the future based on the present must determine that the future is going to be bad."
• "As Owen Hatherley, a perceptive commentator on both Eno and Ballard, asks of Vermilion Sands: ‘could there be here a sort of affirmative retort to the insistence that all Modernist or utopian communities inevitably end up in dystopia?’"