Forget Vampires: Dystopia is the New Black for Teens

With her bleak but beautifully rendered visions of a dystopian future, in books like Oryx and Crake and even 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale, we always knew Margaret Atwood was ahead of her time. Now The Telegraph (who knows everything) confirms:

Many parents might feel worried on finding their teenage children addicted to grim visions of a future in which global warming has made the seas rise, the earth dry up, genetically engineered plants run riot and humans fight over the last available scraps of food. Yet with the arrival of the film of the first book of Suzanne Collins’s best-selling trilogy The Hunger Games this month, dystopia for teenagers has hit an all-time high in public consciousness. The hottest genre in publishing and film on both sides of the Atlantic, it has rendered wizards and vampires redundant. And teen fiction is now so popular that it has entered the shopping basket of goods by which we calculate inflation.

The Gary Ross-directed film based on Suzanne Collins’ top-selling books will be out later this month. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Hemsworth and Woody Harrelson and will be released in both regular and IMAX theaters.