Utopianoids by Michael Mulvihill


Utopianoids is a literary dystopian satire examining how ideological systems sustain themselves through routine, obedience, and moral conformity rather than overt force. Set within a rigidly ordered society divided into a “Failure Class” and a “Non-Failure Class,” the novel follows a world in which bureaucratic processes, language, and institutional logic replace empathy, dissent, and individual thought.
Rather than depicting tyranny as spectacular or violent, Utopianoids focuses on the banal mechanisms of control: paperwork, self-regulation, internalised shame, and the quiet absorption of ideology into daily life. Citizens participate willingly in systems that classify, monitor, and neutralise them, often believing such structures to be necessary, benevolent, or inevitable.
Through repetition, satire, and controlled absurdity, the novel explores how utopian rhetoric masks coercion, how failure is constructed as a moral defect, and how systems persist even after belief in them has eroded. Utopianoids positions dystopia not as a future catastrophe but as a familiar condition—one maintained by compliance, exhaustion, and the fear of falling outside acceptable norms.
Blending philosophical inquiry with dark humour and social critique, Utopianoids interrogates the contemporary obsession with optimisation, respectability, and control, asking how societies come to accept dehumanising structures as common sense.

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