Would You Read This Book/ Is It Too Much Like Any Other Dystopian Fiction You Know?

[ottom]

In the SUA (Secure Union of America) emotions are considered dangerous by the government and are called hysteria, so everybody undergoes an "operation" at age 16 to numb the amygdala to render it incompetent of generating authentic emotions. Afterwards the people receive Syntheses which are injections of synthetic emotion, but only specific feelings and variations of emotions which are government-approved and "safe". The SUA has 61 sectors, which are not border-to-border but scattered across the country, often clustered around big cities, are surrounded by border fences and connected with train tunnels. The land between them is considered dangerous and is called the Wastelands. Venturing past the fences into the Wastelands is punishable by death. The book centres on Lauren Polaris, a girl who is scheduled to get her "operation", but it doesn't work on her. This phenomenon is called nemosiny, where the emotions of a person are too strong to be suppressed by the lethe (the name of the operation). If anybody were to find out about Lauren's nemosiny she would be executed immediately, so she flees into the Wastelands, but what she doesn't know is that the government is searching for her, because every time that one hundred nemosines are alive simultaneously, the government organises the "Endgame" which is where all nemosines are entered into a labyrinth full of malicious traps and treacherous, unseen, disguised dangers. All they have to do is survive - something nobody has ever succeeded in.
What do you think?

[jno]

sounds slightly like Brave New World with a bit of THX1138 and more than a bit of Hunger Games - but what the heck, any writer has the right to take a set up and make it his own. If your own narrative and ideas are good enough, readers will soon forget the ones that inspired you. If they aren't everyone will point it out.

[Tilly2]

Excellent answer from Jno. Took the words out of my mouth.
Go for it. The publishers will let you know if it's 'sellable'.

Good luck.

[bednobs]

harry potter is hopelessly derivative ofmany other books and look how that turned out!
Sounds like hunger games/divergent to me. Also a bit of a plot hole - if they execute you as soon as they know it hasn't worked, how would "they" get 100?

[atalanta]

I have read all those themes in different science fiction/science fantasy novels. In legend, Mnemosyne (note spelling) was a Titaness, the personification of memory, and the mother of the muses.

[Hypognosis]

@ottom

I would be far more interested in the process by which America, of all places, would allow itself to descend into totalitarianism, in the first place. A people who don't want their government taking their guns away certainly won't submit to having state-imposed brain surgery done on them and especially not on their children.

Unless you want it to be an allegory on the legalisation of marijuana? That would be fun (in fact it's a fine line between political satire and out-and-out Woody Allen-ism). (:oO


Plot-hole-wise: if the wastelands are so dangerous, why are escapees executed? Why not just let the dangerousness kill them?
Or is the dangerousness a fable and the elites don't want the city's workforce trampling their countryside paradise?

For instance, how do these cities feed themselves? How many acres of "not-wasteland" are required to feed a city of (say) 2 million people?

I'm only mentioning that if you want to detail your fictional cities with a buffer zone (inside the fences) of viable farmland. In practice, it may be better to leave that for your readers to figure out. Plot holes add to the entertainment value and give the fanbase something to chat about.

[Clanad]

Thing is, how do you address the dichotomy of "everyone undergoes an operaiton at age 16..." with those controlling and doing the "operations" if those elites in control are not, themselves nemosines ? The question that requires an answer is what is the purpose behind all of the manipulation?

[Hypognosis]

@Clanad

I'm puzzled as to why American fiction is so obsessive about emotions, what with Spock/Data/Tuvok type characters, exploring what it is to either lack them or, as Data was able to do, have selected emotions programmed in.

McGuffin isn't the right word for this (I believe that to be something central to the plot, not a pace-modifying side-issue) but the idea seems to be to simultaneously express the thought that human emotions are some kind of obstacle to intellectual achievement and something that the human characters use to best effect, arriving at solutions which the de-emotionalised characters would either overlook as a possibility or dismiss out of hand. Thus the whole subject is explored, for our edification.