Виртуальная реальность как эскапизм ХХI века: современная антиутопическая тенденция (на примере рассказа Л. Каганова "Нульгород" и романа А. Старобинец "Живущий")

Anti-utopia as a kind of literature of foresight warns the public of impending danger. Theme of care from reality into the virtual world has become extremely popular in the conditions of rapidly developing high-tech. This theme represented in the short story "Nulgorod" by the writer, a poet and TV presenter Leonid Kaganov and in the novel "Living" by journalist and writer Anna Starobinec. Nulgorod appears as a utopian city, a virtual paradise, but in order to settle there, a person must die in the real world. Novel by A. Starobinec talks about the new era of human development in which all people are connected into a single virtual network and form a single organism called the Living. The article analyzes the figurative system and plot-compositional structure of the works. Stories are based on binary oppositions "utopia-anti-utopia", "reality-virtuality", "life-death".