Billennium

This short dystopian story starts off with a society overcome  with overpopulation. The city council tries to minimize the issue as much but never can get a solution. They have agreed to meet up to discuss how much sq feet each person can receive. They eventually agree on 38 sq feet for families. If you really think about that, that is nothing for the families that have a big families. However, families struggle to live in the society and they cannot survive with this constraint.

However, the story picks up with the heroes, John Ward and Henry Rossiter. Ward is the moderately aged hero of Billenium. He fills in as an administrator and shares the living space with Henry Rossiter. He is different from Rossiter. He hates the eager landlords who lessen the extent of the desk areas so that there is no space for him to stroll without lurching. In any case, before the end, he turns into a usurious proprietor himself when he finds the void room. Rossiter is altogether different from Ward however they are companions. He is more forceful in his methodology. These two men have regular paying jobs but they believe that this job cannot help them get by in the society. One day, they decided to rebel and knocked down their cubicle. During this time, they have found a hidden room. John and Henry immediately realizes that this can be a space they can use to live. They decide to live in and enjoy what large amount of space they found. They eventually decide to invite their girlfriends who then invite their families. Now they had a huge problem. They realized that the hidden “secret” was just another place that had limited space. When John lived in old estate, he hated the fact that they had landlords. He believes that they were just there to steal people's money. Nonetheless, John became a landlord. He didn't mind the fact that he was making money so he adjusted to the lifestyle. He made so much money that we barely spent time with his family in his new home.  John and Henry believed that they were powerful.

Billenium introduced many themes that I believed were important. Overpopulation, power, and loss of privacy. These themes have been emphasized throughout text that demonstrate a dystopian society. By living within society that everyone basically shares a home and billions live in this society, there's no sense of privacy. This very unfortunate for the people in this dystopian society. The struggles of this society brings us to evolution of power and greed.   Power and greed  forms an important part in this short story. I believe that power made John and Henry what they are now. They found an opportunity to make more money and they took advantage of it. The main characters in this short story hated the fact that landlords took money from them tenants and they became just like the other landlords. They collected so much money that they started to like the position that they were in.

Ballard does a great job in making the themes of this novel very evident. He uses what the things that they hated the most (the landlords) and placed them in their shoes. I believed that he wanted to shows that Ward and Rossiter would be same like the other landlords. Ballard played perfectly. These three themes have simply defined what a dystopian society can be like. I believe that it was a well-rounded short story. It is definitely recommended because a unknown reader that wants to know the difference between a utopian and dystopian society, this will be a great introductory to what a dystopian society is like.