Zombies, and dictators, and plagues—oh my! I’ve loved dystopian literature since I first
picked up 1984 as a teenager. Though the backdrop of a dystopian novel is bleak, there’s
something deeply compelling and, fundamentally, hopeful about it—a sort of defy-all-
odds audacity determined to search for a better world in spite of the way everything
is crumbling. The Hunger Games is one of my favorite book and film franchises of the
last decade for just this reason—it doesn’t flinch away from darkness or death, but it
pushes on toward hope in spite of the horror.
In this issue of Splickety, I’m thrilled to bring you stories in this vein—dark, sometimes
brutal, but always with a trajectory toward something better.
Zombies, and dictators, and plagues—oh my! I’ve loved dystopian literature since I first
picked up 1984 as a teenager. Though the backdrop of a dystopian novel is bleak, there’s
something deeply compelling and, fundamentally, hopeful about it—a sort of defy-all-
odds audacity determined to search for a better world in spite of the way everything
is crumbling. The Hunger Games is one of my favorite book and film franchises of the
last decade for just this reason—it doesn’t flinch away from darkness or death, but it
pushes on toward hope in spite of the horror.
In this issue of Splickety, I’m thrilled to bring you stories in this vein—dark, sometimes
brutal, but always with a trajectory toward something better.