ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS: Who coined the term dystopian?

QUESTION: Who coined the term dystopian? What is considered the earliest dystopian novel?

English philosopher John Stuart Mill coined the term in 1868, using it in a House of Commons debate on Ireland.

 He quipped that the government 'ought... to be called dystopians or cacotopians' because 'what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable'.

Mill's word was the opposite of 'utopia', a place of perfection, especially in laws, government and social conditions.

Thomas More coined 'utopia' in his 1516 book of the same title, describing a perfect society. 

In fact, More's book was a satire on England and his word 'utopia' came from the Greek for 'no place'.

Some 18th and 19th-century novels presaged the dystopian fiction that would become popular later, such as sections of Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift about the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos.

There is also Mary Shelley's novel The Last Man (1826). Shelley, best known for Frankenstein, set her work in a future where a plague is decimating humanity.

Authors such as H. G. Wells wrote utopian fiction in the 1920s. 

Wells called himself a 'utopiographer' and believed that scientific advancements would end war and poverty, as he proposed in his novel Men Like Gods (1923).

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This ideal was also described by William Morris, who wrote about the perfect socialist society in News From Nowhere (1890).

We (1924), by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin, is considered the first true dystopian novel, as it was such a reaction to those utopian ones. 

A comment on Communism, it follows D-503, an engineer working on a spaceship. 

Through a love affair with a rebellious woman named I-330, D-503 begins to question the rigid control of the One State, which suppresses individual desires.

The work inspired the great dystopian novels of the 20th century, such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Simon Willis, Frome, Somerset

QUESTION Why is Heartland Theory such a controversial topic in geography?

The Heartland Theory is a geopolitical concept developed by British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder in 1904. 

He proposed that the 'Heartland', a central area of Eurasia, held the key to global power. 

He argued that controlling this region (primarily Russia and Central Asia) would enable a nation to dominate the world because of its vast resources, strategic location and the difficulty of invasion.

The core idea was summarised by Mackinder as: 'Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the World.' This theory influenced geopolitical strategies throughout the 20th century, particularly in the Cold War.

Critics argue that the theory reduces complex global power dynamics to geographical factors alone, and that it has been used to justify imperialism. 

It has also been criticised for its Eurocentrism and for neglecting the impacts of technological advancements such as air power and global trade, which have diminished the strategic significance of territorial control.

Dr K. Simon, Lincoln

QUESTION Is the discovery of living entombed animals the stuff of science or legend?

Further to the earlier answer, the stories of creatures entombed and living for lengthy periods brought back memories of a similar thing happening when I was in the building trade.

 A few of us were building a small enclosure (like a little chapel) in the corner of St Ninian's churchyard near Buckie in Scotland. 

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It was to provide protection from the weather for the graves of several Roman Catholic priests who had been buried there. Their graves were in enclosed concrete boxes with heavy concrete slabs on top. 

They were almost full of fine sand.

Once we had almost finished building, we had to rearrange one or two of the slabs. When we lifted the first slab, to our amazement we saw a quite big, healthy-looking toad looking up at us from the top of the sand. 

It jumped out and scampered away.

I can assure you that this was a sealed concrete-walled grave and that the last interment had been several decades earlier. 

How that creature got in there and survived has bewildered me for about 70 years. Unfortunately, the other builders present have passed on now. 

There must be a natural explanation, which I would like to know.

George Charles, Aberdeen