Sarah Holland-Batt

It's an interesting question.

I think the novelists, I mean, I think all of these texts are trying to shine a light on this issue and I don't think any of these novels are interested in upholding this idea that this is a good thing.

You know, when a dystopian text is really successful, it should shock the reader into a realisation about the world they live in.

You know, it's not about imagining a reality that's so distant and

that it has nothing to do with your life.

Successful dystopian fiction has a connection to reality.

And I think when I look at these texts, I can see so much of the world that we live in today kind of being replicated over time.

What's frustrating, of course, is that the readers and that the society that these writers continue to write in over centuries don't heed the message.

So that's the sort of frustrating thing.

You know, I think these are texts that are very keen on

to engage the reader in this idea that, well, perhaps that idea that the elderly are useless and should be thrown on the scrap heap is alarming, is something that should be questioned.

But like I said, the magical thinking is so strong, this idea that, oh, it happens to a group of people over there.

And I think at the heart of that is the notion of empathy, whether you can empathise with a group of people.

People have a lot of difficulty empathising with the elderly because they don't want to imagine themselves in their place.

And so I think we do need a radical shift, a cultural shift to truly heed these warnings that are present in these texts.

But it is extraordinary to see it, to see the same idea repeated over time, over and over again.

You know, this idea that all these cultures over centuries are not valuing the elderly in precisely the same way and their writers are seeing that.

the kind of logical extension of that as a kind of extermination.

It's really amazing, the kind of consistency of thinking over time.

I think so.