What happens to a dystopia that never comes to be? Does a story’s inaccuracy in predicting the future make it kitsch, a curio with no value beyond historic curiosity? Is an unrealized world the science fiction equivalent of a doomsday prophet after doomsday comes and goes? Or is there still something to be gleaned from a dark vision that might have gotten some particulars spectacularly wrong, but still taps into a broader understanding of how the future might go awry, and suggests what we might do to keep that from happening?
The 1972 science fiction film
Z.P.G.: Zero Population Growth imagines a world destined to die not by fire, but by overcrowding. Set sometime in the early years of the 21st century, it takes place in a world undone by a population explosion, a development that has led to skies choked with smog and the mass extinction of virtually every animal and plant species. Those disasters have led the World Federation Council to impose a 30-year ban on childbirth. The W