Dean Koontz - the Undercity - Small Essay

Dean Koontz – The Undercity

The Undercity is a very interesting story, as it relates to many things that are unspoken in our society, or are taboos, but are widely practiced in the “underworld”. It depicts the human nature as we know today, with the propensity to gambling, prostitution, drugs and illegal activities in general, basically corrupt beings, but in a future world that’s essentially controlled by the government in every aspect, in an undercity where gambling and drug usage are regulated and taxed by the government and people can easily have access to it. What was previously known as the criminal underworld of our time, now resides in massive buildings called an undercity, with ranks of criminals and all sorts of newly found illegal activities and law circumvention. Government has extinguished the ways of dirty profit such as drug dealing, by regulating the market and making things easily available to anyone. Even murder became commonplace and people could easily settle their grudges, by the ways of duels, killing another very profitable job – the hired assassin.

Humanity is very much corrupt, as the author starts with a brief description of a sabotage event taking place early in his day. Cities are now enclosed spaces, in the form of a building, and the “government” has the citizens trapped into these spaces, with the threat that the outside world is ruled by plagues and other damages. The main character manages to sell ways out of the city. The main character also has key people in facilities on his payroll. Humanity is very corrupt, just like any city in our current age. The main character even manages to help a “customer” with his problem of “conscious male chauvinism”, which is a crime by that time’s standards.

In the future depicted by the story, humanity is widely served by robots, things that were previously illegal are now government controlled, and it portrays a future of extreme corruption and crime, at least in our current standards....