Dystopia was once upon a time a filmic theme park, wherein a director could imagine all sorts of random tyrannies and arbitrary agents of terror. The classic embodiment of this dystopia was Mad Max, which was made in 1979 when communism effortlessly controlled much of the Eurasian landmass, while the Shah’s iron rule ensured that Iran remained a pro-western secular state.

Forty-five years on, the global map (and the certainties it conveyed) has been shattered. Economic communism survives solely in the coelacanth that is North Korea, which has sent much of its army to fight a war that would have been literally incredible to the minds of 1979. But far worse – and this would have been  a quite impossible feat for the human imagination of forty-five years ago – is the fate of the Middle East. In seemingly just a few days, Syria ceased to be a state in a state of civil war, and instead became dystopia’s latest recruit, a Petrie dish of rapine and warring baronies, just like its neighbour, Iraq. Semi-dystopia reigns in Libya and much of Algeria while in its unbridled, full-blooded form, it clearly hopes to extend its suzerainty to Jordan, Saudi and much of Iran and then reconnect with its kindred creed in Afghanistan. Why not then spread its malignant imperium to Pakistan?

What did the world do as civilisation was beginning to unravel and Christmas, 2024 approached? It had a conference on global warming in Baku, which is along the meridian coveted by dystopia’s ambition, while almost universally denouncing Israel for fighting one of dystopia’s most perfervid allies.