The New York Times Books section has a story on a crop of dystopian books slated for release this season (I guess, it is a season?) At one point they quote a St. Paul bookstore manager, Matt Keliher, who says “People are finding comfort in dystopian books, or maybe more accurately, they’re finding answers in them.”

Well, no shit, Sherlock!

Seriously, I’m glad that I’m not alone in this, even at my advanced age.

I’ve been in an existential funk since about mid-October. Blame fall mid-terms, blame the election, blame the end of a project, blame my own chemistry, blame burn-out, blame whatever, but I have been down and haven’t been able to get up for very long since. Maybe for about three or four weeks at the beginning of the spring semester, but only temporarily. Joy comes in flashes, although I have no reason to complain. In fact, I have much to celebrate. Perhaps that is the reason that I find The Brain Tumor so funny.

In any case, in the midst of this funk last October, my husband, who is generally a joyful type of guy who, as he puts it, “likes happy” (which in no way explains his attraction to me), went out of town. I used his absence to watch American Horror Story: Roanoke. Normally, horror is not my thing. Suspense, yes. Gore, no. This, however, featured a historical element so, why not?

What a fucked up disturbing mess! I loved it! It was the perfect distraction for my distracted mind. The world in which it was set was so dark, so sick, so twisted, that it surpassed whatever phantom plagued my own mind and contained it in this controlled environment. It isn’t dystopian, but it might as well be. After all, it dealt with the ramifications of a reality show gone wrong. Or something. In any case, I began to realize that going dark — not just depressing, but dark — was comforting for a reason and in a way that it hadn’t been for a while.

The same went for Handmaid’s Tale, and now I’m getting into Children of Men, although it isn’t quite as satisfying just yet. I want something in which these terrible things are explored, but in the lab of fiction. Where the venality can be taken to extremes without actually hurting anyone, as a means to release the paralyzing parts of my dread.

Indeed, that was the way I dealt with most of the latter half of 2015 and all of 2016. I would tell myself dystopian tales to get myself to sleep at night. I’d take the news that infuriated me all day, and then I’d push it further in my bedtime stories. The creative instinct and control of the medium gave me the peace to fall asleep.

Yeah. Imagine my shock when some of my worst predictions came true and some I could not have imagined developed beyond. I can’t play that game anymore. Reality has surpassed my own limited skills.

But others are better. So I turn to them.