[mjp]

This theme consists of settings in which evil has essentially prevailed, and humanity – or remnants thereof – are trying to scrape by as best they can, usually under pretty ghastly circumstances.

Art is a concretization of a person's metaphysics and sense of life. If the writer has a sense of life of the uselessness of reason and the helplessness of man, if he believes that man is a puppet controlled by his environment, and is not responsible for the consequences of his own actions, then he not able to use reason, and is helpless to do what he needs to do to achieve happiness and the good life.

[cgbg]

The Ayn Rand quote: “Art is the selective re-creation of reality.”

The artist gets to choose their subject. It says everything about them.

If they model dystopia, they live in a psychic dystopia.