That's right. There's another 'young adult' dystopia making its way to the silver screen. Whilst this may appear to be reminiscent of Twilight being followed by all those terrible supernatural romances, the new trend for YA dystopian adaptations seems to be of much better quality. Divergent tells the story of a world in which people are allocated into factions by their personality. The book follows a teenager who discovers her personality does not fit into those of her family, so chooses to leave their faction in a moderately transparent metaphor for puberty. Judging from recent trends in Hollywood, dystopian fictions are the new vogue. Often laced with satire and several levels of meaning, the genre allows a writer to comment on society without being bullish. Most dystopias either follow the aftermath of some sort of disaster (plague, nuclear war) or the results of a totalitarian regime taking absolute power. Margaret Atwood, one of the most prolific writers when it comes to what she calls "speculative fiction", has said that these forays into the future are to be treated like warning signs, a "do not enter" if you will. Either way, it can be fascinating to examine a writer's image of a world not so far from our own, including how easily the society we think so seemingly firm now could slip into something much more sinister.
