I have long been a fan of dystopian worlds, and most of my reading, watching, and writing habits seem to reflect that fact. People say that I like depressing works, but I believe that in the midst of the sadness is where you find hope. And with enough hope, we can all find the power to save ourselves. These are some of my favorite works on the subject, and I hope that you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoyed creating this list.
The grandfather of the dystopian novel, Brave New World presented us with a homogenized, mass-produced, sterile world where everyone speaks the same language, has the same beliefs, and are all born from the same artificial wombs. Whereas most dystopian fiction seemed centered around fears of knowledge being banned and removed, Huxley showed us a world filled with people with no desire to attain this knowledge in the first place, people content to fill their time self-soothing themselves with the happiness-inducing drug Soma. Well, Huxley showed us that and orgies, lots of orgies.
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
EVERYONE BELONGS TO EVERYONE ELSE. Read the dystopian classic that inspired the hit Sky TV series.
'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale.
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.
You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.
1984, the rare book that both the left and the right side of politics routinely reference, is the top tier of dystopian worlds, a world somehow both completely foreign yet utterly recognizable, like looking into a funhouse mirror that accurately reflects the worst parts of our society back at us. It is a book that is simultaneously claustrophobic and depressing, yet reading it becomes an almost cathartic experience, even as we see so many of its themes becoming more and more present in our everyday life. Never forget that Big Brother is watching, and he has a whole collection of rats that he’s not afraid to use.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
I Am Legend, Matheson’s dystopian horror/sci-fi novel from 1954, imagines a world where a pandemic has decimated society, killing the majority of the population and turning the rest into flesh-eating creatures who just happen to have an unhealthy relationship with the sun, but at its heart,I Am Legend is one of the most impactful stories of human loneliness ever told. We watch our protagonist, Robert Neville, slowly lose hope of ever curing the disease that has ravaged the world while also feeling his pain as every chance of meaningful contact is ripped away from him. Scary, exciting, and utterly hopeless, it somehow leaves you with a slight smile as you read Neville’s ultimate fate. It’s a good thing that a pandemic like that could never happen in the real world. Wait...well no, I haven’t read the news in a while. What’s been going on?
An acclaimed SF novel about vampires. The last man on earth is not alone ...Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth ...but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive like this?
The most recently published book on my list, 2008’s The Hunger Games, like all good dystopian fiction, presents us with a world that is both insanely different from our own yet entirely recognizable. North America has been split into twelve districts, each with its own specific natural resource, and is ruled over by the Capitol, whose wealthy citizens maintain their privileged lifestyles by exploiting the labor from the districts. In grand Roman gladiator tradition, two children are annually chosen from each district to participate in a widely televised battle royale to the death, serving as both punishment for a past rebellion and as entertainment to pacify the masses. Despite being written for a younger audience, this fact mostly evident in the tacked-on love triangle, it maintains an exciting yet unsettling atmosphere throughout. But for the record, I’m Team Peeta.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...
A slight cheat on my part, as Watchmenis a graphic novel instead of a prose novel, the almost nihilistic deconstruction of the superhero myth remains a modern classic. Set in an alternate 1980s, an alternate reality whose doomsday clock is bordering on midnight, it’s a broken mirror reflection of a world that is both frighteningly foreign yet uncannily similar to the era of my childhood, an era where nuclear war seemed like an imminent event. The superheroes of Watchmen were no longer super; the villains weren’t that easy to identify, and good and evil became truly subjective ideas, forcing you to ask the novel’s unanswerable question: Who watches the watchmen?
A hit HBO original series, Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from award-winning author Alan Moore, presents a world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history--the U.S. won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the Cold War is in full effect.
Considered the greatest graphic novel in the history of the medium, the Hugo Award-winning story chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the superhero is dissected as an unknown assassin stalks the erstwhile heroes.
This edition of Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from Alan Moore,…
Years ago, a gene virus ran rampant across the planet, leaving a small percentage of people gifted/cursed with extraordinary abilities, and humanity itself forever changed. Several of these people joined together to form The Seven, the most powerful group of supers the world had ever known. The Seven have placed themselves as the nation's rulers, controlling the country through fear and intimidation. But now, someone or something is murdering The Seven one-by-one, single handedly attempting to make them pay for all of the sins they have committed.
To stop a killer, The Seven turn to a man who hates them as much as anyone. An imprisoned man known only as The Detective finds himself in the unenviable position of helping the people he despises in exchange for his freedom.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
