Why are writers so obsessed with scary emotionless futures?

In Drake Doremus’ chilly new science fiction film Equals, Silas (Nicholas Hoult) and Nia (Kristen Stewart) star as star-crossed lovers with a familiar problem: they live in a future world that’s supposedly fixed all its problems by eradicating emotion. Their society has found a biological trigger to shut down human feeling, creating cold, placid, orderly communities where the people resemble mildly judgmental robots. Unfortunately for Silas and Nia, they both have “switched-on