When I’m writing, my brain’s ability to jump instantly to the worst-case scenario is a huge plus. But in life, that’s just called “anxiety,” something I’ve always struggled with. Works of fiction that do what my brain does naturally — assume the worst — and still find some hope, humor, or redemption there have always been weirdly reassuring to me. And what’s more “worst-case scenario” than post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction? Here are five books where, in the wake of disaster or the grip of tyranny, people still manage to have dreams, dignity, or even just a laugh.
Station Eleven reminded me why I fell in love with reading in the first place. Its post-apocalypse still has Shakespeare and comics (yay!) and airports (boo!) and it’s shockingly life-affirming for a book about what happens after most of human life is extinguished. Even though it jumps around in time and space, it feels like it’s capturing a single moment, specifically the moment life as you know it slips through your hands and you appreciate it for the first time in all its beauty at the exact second you lose it.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
In Zone One, the frantic oh-*expletive* bloodbath phase of a zombie apocalypse has clicked over into something like a new normal. In lower Manhattan, our hero “Mark Spitz” mops up straggler zombies seemingly stuck in mindless loops from their past lives and reflects on the transformed yet familiar landscape. Zone One made me realize how specific streets are encoded in my own memories, and made me want to be more present in my own life, to move through the world less like a zombie.
In this brilliantly original take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, American novelist Colson Whitehead shakes up the zombie genre with genius results.
A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilisation under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka 'Zone One' - eliminating the most dangerous plague victims, but pockets of infected squatters remain. Teams…
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke…
When my dad first gave me this foundational cyberpunk novel as a teen, I was obsessed and inspired — and apparently so were many of today’s billionaire tech gods (this is the book that gave us the phrase “metaverse,” after all). Samurai swords, ancient curses, the Mafia, floating cities, robot dogs, pizza, what’s not to love? I’m kinda skeptical of how its inspiration is playing out in Silicon Valley, but its humor, imagination, and attitude still stick with me and are a worthy benchmark for anyone trying to build fictional worlds of their own.
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30…
So, I’m stretching the definition of “dystopia” here, but I’ll use any excuse to tout this gorgeous graphic novel. It’s about a young crew who travel around in a goldfish-shaped craft fixing up free-floating space ruins until embarking on a mission to help one member reconnect with a lost love. My elementary school best friend and I bonded over drawing comics and On A Sunbeam made me wonder what might have been if we never stopped.
“Tillie Walden is the future of comics, and On a Sunbeam is her best work yet. It’s a ‘space’ story unlike any you’ve ever read, with a rich, lived-in universe of complex characters.” ―Brian K. Vaughan, Saga and Paper Girls
Two timelines. Second chances. One love.
A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together.
Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love―only to learn the pain of loss.
With interwoven timelines and stunning art, award-winning graphic novelist Tillie Walden creates an inventive world, breathtaking romance, and…
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space…
A gleaming futuristic dystopia and a post-apocalyptic Hawaii are just two of the times and places in which this mind-bogglingly ambitious novel takes place. When my dad died a few years ago, this book reminded me that our lives extend beyond our lives in ways we can’t possibly imagine. It was comforting. Oh, also, I’m super jealous of David Mitchell as a writer: seems like you’d need at least six reincarnated lifetimes to get that good.
Six lives. One amazing adventure. The audio publication of one of the most highly acclaimed novels of 2004. 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great…
Tom Parking has always loved books where a random kid gets whisked away to a magical realm where they’re the Chosen One, so when it actually happens to him, he’s thrilled! But then it turns out that the magical realm he’s taken to… kinda sucks.
So when Tom turns down the job of Chosen One, he thinks he’s making a smart decision. But when he discovers he’s been replaced by his best friend Kyle, who’s always been cooler, more athletic, and better with girls, Tom wants Crap Kingdom back — at any cost. And the hilarity that ensues will determine the fate of the universe.
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is…
