Is Dystopian Fiction considered Sci-Fi or Fantasy?

Question pretty much says it all....

Just saying it's a dystopia doesn't give enough info to decide whether it's SF or fantasy.

If your dystopia is populated by elves, it's fantasy.

If the elves are replaced with robots, its SF.

Not literally, but you get what I'm saying. :)

Dystopian may be neither, even with elves and/or robots. It's a political thing, an world that is unpleasant, such as a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. It can be futuristic, maybe with a few elves or some robots, but it might be called political fantasy or political SF; good example of both is our federal government where elves and robots dance a merry grand pas de deux.

It all depends on what the author's first successful writing was about. If you first get published writing about divorced New Yorkers, you could write a novel set entirely on the planet Blabalfarg and featuring zombie elf computer hackers, and it would somehow end up on the "literary fiction" shelf.

I exaggerate slightly, but really there seems to be no particular rhyme or reason to it, and it ends up mostly being a marketing decision.

Examples:

• 
  1984. By any reasonable, objective definition, this novel is SF. You will never find it on the SF/F shelf.


• 
  Fahrenheit 451. It's actually less SF than 1984 is, but because Bradbury made his name as a SF writer, it gets categorized either way.


• 
  The Road. The writing is "literary", and McCarthy is otherwise mostly known for realistic fiction, so this one ends up on the LitFic shelf.


• 
  We. About on a level with 1984 in terms of its discussion of technology, but tends (for whatever reason) to show up more often in SF/F. What role it's being Russian plays in this I'm not sure.


• 
  Brave New World. Huxley's novel is absolutely SF, and was contemporary with a lot of the early pulp sci-fi, but I have never found it on a SF/F shelf.


• 
  The Hunger Games. Since it's written for a YA audience, it's treated as "genre immune".


• 
  Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep?. Philip K. Dick seems to have ended up in a weird pocket (along with Bradbury, Heinlen, and a few others) where he is pretty much definitively considered SF but taken seriously anyway. In any case, most of his writing could be considered dystopian in one way or another.


• 
  Spin. Robert Charles Wilson's novel is very character-driven, but since it also has a hard-SF component, it is relegated to the SF/F shelf.

I suppose the takeaway is, dystopian fiction gets counted as SF if the publishing industry says it is. (I don't think I've ever seen it called "fantasy" unless it is explicitly so--i.e. the dystopia has a specifically magical or supernatural cause.)

But where are the novels where things are supposed to be good? Where do the eutopian novels lie?

We know our community isn't perfect, but we're trying our best. We really are.

All of my dystopics have been scifi, but now that I think about it, I haven't ever written a utopian piece. Utopias are boring!

And Dystopias are selfish jerks, but everyone somehow loves those. It's why every TV show these days is a comedy about people complaining how all their friends are selfish jerks who only exist to screw each other over. Injury and loss is funny!

Then someone steps in with a Eutopia, and then the Dystopias are going to scramble as everyone secretly starts fleeing en masse to start new lives in the good place. Maybe the Eutopia isn't perfect, but sure as sure the chances are better than living in Dystopia.

What kind of sick minds create Dystopian places, anyway, the same ones that invented outdoor day cares surrounded with barbed wire and logs as the only toy to play with, while saying it was on the grounds of some school for gifted chidlren? The activities there were never fun and none of the children were nice. I was glad to be away from it when it was over. Any place, even regular places that were not Eu were better than sticking around there.

Most classic dystopias have been sci-fi however, as noted above, they could be just about anything. But if you think about it, many fantasy novels are actually dystopic societies. (Evil king that oppresses the people has to be overthrown. You know.)

I would say dystopias and sci-fi go almost hand in hand, seeing as most of them are set in the future and deal with governments oppressing the people with advanced technology and such. Of course, that's a very broad statement. For example, a good exception would be V for Vendetta, which is dystopian and set in the future, but I wouldn't really say it has any elements of sci-fi other then that it takes place in the future.

One of the (many) things that makes the society in The Giver so fascinating is that it's hard to define it as a pure dystopia, or a pure utopia. I used to ask my students to write about how they would categorize it, and whether they would choose to live in such a community. A surprising number said yes, they would.

They feed, clothe, and educate their population. Everyone has a role in society, tailored to their abilities and personality. Children are raised in stable families. There's a strong community. The elderly are cared for and treated with respect. It's a hierarchical society, but not nearly to the extreme of most human communities past or present. There is a great deal to be said in favor of the way these people live.

Then there's the question of what they've given up, which is fairly horrifying. But they haven't traded in their human birthright for nothing. It's not a dysfunctional society, and I wouldn't call it evil. Damaged, perhaps, in ways that prevent the people in it from understanding how it's damaged.

YEP! :)

Pretty much what Tooterfish said.

However, make sure you actually have Dystopian fiction before you start saying that. A (seemingly) recent marketing move has been that Dystopian fiction has been slapped on any form of speculative fiction in which bad stuff happens. The Road is not Dystopian—there's no oppressive society. The Foundation series is not Dystopian—just because it's the future and bad stuff happens doesn't mean that counts.