A Clockwork Orange and how it fits in

“A Clockwork Orange” is a novel by Anthony Burgess about a young gang member named Alex who lives in a future dystopian version of England. After killing a woman, he is sent to prison where he learns his ways but society doesn’t forgive him. When talking about it’s sci-fi aspects there are very few occasions where it really shines, one of which is language. Burgess created an impressive dictionary of slang words for Alex and his “Droogs” to say, sometimes it’s incredibly hard to read but you get the hang of it as it goes along. Other than that the sci-fi elements are far and in-between, making this story more literary than sci-fi. I think to some it can be incredibly off putting. Questions like “If it’s that far into the future why are they driving normal cars down normal streets?” Come up and sometimes you even wonder why they bothered having it in the future in the first place if the only thing coming out of it would be the language. Wouldn’t it have been easier to write the book without it? I personally think it’s all apart of Clockwork’s charm and what makes it stand out. It uses subtlety to it’s key, it’s not a massive world building epic, instead it’s completely character driven, especially Alex who is one of the most developed characters I’ve ever read. I can relate sci-fi gentrification to something of metal music. There’s thrash metal, doom metal, black metal, shock metal, dinosaur metal, it all exists under the same title. Sci-fi can be from an entire universe of fiction to earth now with a small piece of technology that doesn’t exist. I’m not effected by the lack of aliens and monsters within Clockwork, if it had all of it I think it would distract too far from the base of the story which is about the qualms of accepting the morally unaccepted. Questions of it fitting in never really crossed my mind as the story took the reigns first and foremost. It was like a well rounded cake with a nice sci-fi cherry on it, a plus and nothing more.