Symposium: Utopia and Dystopia in Turkish SF Literature
Introduction: from Pandora’s Box to the City of the Sun
Meltem Dağcı and Duygu Küçüköz Aydemir
In this special issue, we trace the themes of utopia and dystopia in Turkish science fiction literature, exploring narrative practices across both adult and children’s literature. The tension between utopia and dystopia—between hope and fear, reason and chaos—reveals deep reflections on social, cultural, and technological transformations.
Science fiction literature establishes a creative imaginary universe that rearticulates social, political, and moral values concerning the future. While doing so, it draws upon two opposite imaginative modes: the benevolent (utopian) and the malevolent (dystopian). In this respect, both utopia and dystopia constitute powerful intellectual spaces in which ideas of progress, order, freedom, and destruction are questioned. With the accelerating transformations of the modern world, technological and cultural shifts have opened the door to new literary visions of the future—visions where hope and fear, reason and chaos, salvation and catastrophe coexist. In other words, utopia and dystopia exist through one another.
In the early Republican era, the themes of utopia and dystopia in Turkish science fiction literature often exalted ideals of science, progress, and modernization. After the 1980s, however, they expanded toward issues such as globalization, authority, identity, outer space, and ecological crisis. In recent years, Turkish science fiction narratives have further diversified through engagements with digital culture, artificial intelligence, the surveillance society, migration, body politics, and posthumanist thought.
The children’s and young adult dimension of Turkish science fiction also holds a distinct significance. These works nurture imagination through adventure, discovery, and didactic elements, fostering scientific curiosity and ethical awareness among young readers. Utopian and dystopian motifs are reinterpreted here through the lenses of hope, exploration, and moral values, offering alternative visions of the future.
Our journey from “Pandora’s Box” to the “City of the Sun” explores the intellectual landscape opened by utopian and dystopian imagination in Turkish science fiction. As conceptualized in our call for papers, disedebitopia—an approach that situates “edeb” (both literary grace and ethical respect) at the heart of its reflection—forms the central axis of this issue. Each contribution seeks to discuss the evolving narrative traditions of Turkish literature within the axes of science fiction, utopia, and dystopia from an interdisciplinary perspective.
This special issue not only examines the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of utopian imagination but also illuminates the possibilities of resistance, hope, and rebirth within the seemingly bleak landscapes of dystopian narratives. The articles herein reveal how utopian and dystopian themes have transformed across different periods of Turkish science fiction, how they intersect with conceptual debates, and how they acquire distinctive forms within their historical and social contexts. In doing so, we aim to build a bridge between the national and universal dimensions of our collective imagination about the future.
Articles in this special issue on Turkish Science Fiction Literature were designed to both contribute to the scholarly literature and to establish an archive for the field. It has brought forth articles that examine different periods and works, promoting greater recognition of local science fiction authors and their contributions. Collectively, these works enable writers, scholars, and readers to better understand the utopian and dystopian worlds imagined in the making of a “future” society.
We hope that this special issue will shed light on the intellectual richness of Turkish science fiction literature and remind us that imagining the future is, at the same time, a way of transforming the present.
SFRA Review 