How does one make an oligarchy interesting?

I was going to let my world be controlled by an oligarchy, but I noticed that they are really overused. My world was devastated by earthquakes, but a powerful chemical was released from the earth during it's destruction. So the scientists that learned to control this chemical had power over the world. I thought this being an oligarchy would make sense, but how to set mine from the usual oligarchy?

edited 14th Aug '14 2:58:43 PM by LambentSoul

That would work for as long as no outsiders could duplicate the process. You could get a story out of:

A) The outsiders trying to dupe the process and/or the insiders trying to prevent that from happening.

B) The beginnings of the New Resolves, as they struggle for acceptance during a period of calamity, only to finally decide that they need to take drastic action (which leads to the establishment of the oligarchy).

C) The struggle to maintain their oligarchy against outside political and economic forces - to maintain a functioning world peace.

D) The eventual self-destruction of the New Resolves as they fall apart from internal strife.

E) The period after the New Resolves have fallen. The world is suffering, and a few brave selects (call them the Second Neo Elysium) must seek out the lost secrets of controlling Kisuf-Unomi Gas. (Consider that pretty much every powerful energy source is basically a two-edged sword.)

Oh, and I would look into Doctor Who S7 E4 "Inferno". It has a plot element not too far from what you're suggesting, though it goes with a dictatorship rather than... whatever it is when it's a group of pricks instead of a single prick in charge.

(EDIT: I'm gonna sound like a dork now, but... there's an element of that in Doctor Who S14 E4 "The Face of Evil", though the link doesn't make a deal out of it. It's quite a good episode, too - much more carefully thought out than was typical for the era.)

edited 14th Aug '14 11:15:40 PM by DeusDenuo

Tied to the point of "if someone else can replicate this we're screwed", maybe they start hiding their secrets like the artisan guilds of the middle age? In due time, those practices might become more and more esoteric, until, a couple hundred years down the line, you have something similar to Warhammer40000 's Adeptus Mechanicus, a very reclusive and secretive order, with very strict hierarchies for the disclosure of secrets, and where those secrets are mostly esoteric mumbo-jumbo, their true meaning or importance forgotten a long time ago?

What makes you think oligarchy is overused?

Uh, OP, have you been paying attention to governments throughout history? The majority of them were autocracies or oligarchies in practice.

There's been a glut of Young Adult dystopias recently, but those don't focus on the system of government so much as the society...

Lambent, if you have any responses to what we've said here, it won't hurt to lay out your cards. It'll help us help you better.