What is Dystopia?

What sort of plots do Dystopia's involve?

Dystopian fiction usually involves a tyrannical government opressing people, take 1984, The Running Man, Animal Farm and other books for example.

It's a novel that takes place in the future where something has gone very wrong. Evil government, outbreak of horrible disease that kills most of the people, natural disasters that left the country in ruins, etc. I love dystopias, but they can be preachy, which annoys me. You'll be reading an awesome book full of adventure and awesome characters, until suddenly you get this little aside that basically says something like, "would that the generation that came before us had taken better care of our planet! Then none of these terrible things would have happened!" and then I have another book-shaped dent in my wall.

A dystopia is the most inperfect world/society/government possible

The exact opposite of a utopia where life/society/human race has achieved perfection, the perfect balance of everything-no wants, every need meet, etc.

Dystopia=life sucks. Big brother, big government, everyones hand in your pocket, society destroyed, civilization clinging to a thread if it exists at all; all is lost; life is a struggle on a grand sucky scale; you just wanna do or you go through life like lobotomized.

Well, a utopia is an ideal, perfect world, while a dystopia is the exact opposite: it is the very creation of a nightmare world, and usually involves some type of oppression or poverty. Examples include:

We
1984
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
A Clockwork Orange
And more recently "The Hunger Games"