Fiction
Dystopias & Dark Futures
Broken worlds and cautionary futures, from the canonical to the unsettlingly current.
14 books · ranked
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1
1984
Total surveillance, rewritten history and a man who dares to think for himself; the defining dystopia.
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2
Brave New World
A future engineered for comfort and conformity; the other great dystopia, warning against pleasure rather than fear.
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3
Fahrenheit 451
A fireman whose job is burning books begins to question why; a passionate defence of reading.
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4
The Handmaid's Tale
Women reduced to their fertility in a theocratic America; chillingly plausible and fiercely written.
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5
The Road
A father and son walk through a dead, ash-grey world; stripped-bare, unbearably tender post-apocalyptic fiction.
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6
Never Let Me Go
Three friends at a strange English boarding school slowly learn what they were made for; restrained and heartbreaking.
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7
Oryx and Crake
A man may be the last human after a engineered catastrophe; sharp, scary speculative fiction.
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8
Station Eleven
A travelling theatre troupe keeps art alive after a pandemic; quietly hopeful and beautifully structured.
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9
A Clockwork Orange
Ultra-violence, free will and a teenage narrator with his own invented slang; provocative and stylistically dazzling.
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10
A Clash of Kings
In this thrilling sequel to A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has created a work of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination. A Clash of Kings transports us to a world of revelry and revenge, w
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11
Adulthood Rites
The second book in the Lilith's Brood trilogy, this story takes place years after the arrival of Oankali aliens in the first book. Now, the Oankali have established some colonies on Earth, where they
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12
After the Flood
A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America's great coastal cities and th
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13
Allegiant
The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered -- fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world pas
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14
American War
"An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle--a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its mos