Dystopias are certainly nothing new. The word "dystopia" itself, meaning "bad place" (from the Greek dys and topos), has been around since at least the 19th century, and Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and Orwell's 1984 (1949), commonly regarded as the first dystopian novels that fit firmly into the genre, were published more than 75 years ago. Even the first YA dystopian novel is older than 20—Lois Lowry's The Giver, which came out in 1993. While these are individual examples from previous decades, however, one would be hard pressed to find a YA shelf in any bookstore nowadays that isn't stocked with dozens of dystopian titles. According to film critic Dana Stevens, it is the similarities that can be drawn between dystopian settings and the daily lives of teenagers that make YA dystopian stories so captivating: the high school experience involves the same social structure as the Hunger Games arena, for example, or the faction—divided world of Divergent. Teenagers might not literally have to fight each other to the death or go through horrendous trials to join a virtue—based faction for the rest of their lives, but there's something in each story that connects to their own backgrounds. The "cutthroat race for high school popularity" might feel like an "annual televised fight", and the pressure to choose a clique at school bears a strong resemblance to Tris's faction dilemma in Divergent.