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The dystopian era of SF movies started in 1972 with Silent Running.[1] That was the first "grubby future" Hollywood movie, and is an obscure but notable milestone in cinema history. There was early dystopian SF. H.G. Wells' The Time Machine ends with a dystopia.
E. M. Foester's The Machine Stops (1909) was way, way ahead of its time. Vashti’s next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of
the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and
speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any
ideas lately? Might one tell her one’s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit
the public nurseries at an early date? — say this day month. To most of these questions she replied with irritation — a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public
nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just
been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there
was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her
lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti
nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in
their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous
account of music in the pre-Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst
of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primæval as were the methods of
I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the
musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas.
Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and
many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the
sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many
friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed. Social media. 1909. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops |