The idea of a utopia has long been embraced by philosophical thinkers. The roots of the concept date back to Plato's Republic and St. Augustine's City of God. However, it was Sir Thomas More who truly defined the term and established the genre in his 1516 work entitled Utopia. More's work is pivotal in the 20th century understanding of utopia. More described an ideal state, but his writing was loaded with satire against the current cultural and political conditions. It is this interpretation of a utopia work that 20th century writers manipulated into dystopia texts. The three most famous of these works are Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell's 1984 (1949). .

             These novels all play with the Greek translation of the word, utopia, which can mean "no place" or something that is impossible to establish. It is this concept that these three 20th century writers all recognized. In the three novels, the authors depict societies in which an authoritarian state has been established and deemed perfect. However, in each case there is literally "no place" for the individual to exist. The negativity expressed about government and individuality by these authors suggests that they no longer hope for a better tomorrow for humans. Instead, they project a highly technological future of extreme human efficiency and rationality, devoid of all individuality.

             Historically, the three dystopia novels all grew out of what was happening in the development and the practices of the Soviet Union. Zamyatin's novel written in 1920-21, but never officially published in the Soviet Union, was amazingly prophetic of what was to come in that it predicted the ready acceptance of the end of imagination and the willingness of loyal Soviet citizens to become cogs in the machinery of the state (Terras 565). The other novels, since they were written after the Soviet Union was more established, speak more directly to events that were occurring in the Soviet Union and in the case of 1984, in the post WWII Eastern Block countries, as well.