You may think our world is crazy f**ked up and sometimes, it makes you wonder, what’s it all about. It’s no surprise that so many of choose to escape life for a while by delving into a book or movie that takes us to a whole other world. Sometimes we want that other world to be beautiful, fun, a fantasy where everyone is happy. Sometimes we want something that let’s us know that, no matter how bad we think our world is, it could be far worse – Dystopian worlds. Let’s delve in.
Snapshot Survey
Snapshot Survey
1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The first book in Suzanne Collins’ wildly successful young adult trilogy about a dystopian society that holds an annual event in which young people from districts across the country are picked to participate in a battle to the death.
Buy at: amazon.com
2. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
If you have seen the movie, then you know there is a lot going on in Cloud Atlas! Set in a dystopian future in Korea, the novel spans over six different narratives and numerous time periods. It definitely keeps you on your toes!
Buy at: amazon.com
3. The Giver by Lois Lowry
A really interesting novel set in a future society where war, pain and grief has been eradicated, and one single person has to become the ‘Receiver Of Memory’ to remember what it was like before and make sure the world remembers its lessons.
Buy at: amazon.com
4. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
A tech heavy love story set in the not too distant future about an American man who falls in love with a Korean-American woman, and their love story unfolds in a New York City that is on the brink of collapse.
Buy at: amazon.com
5. Animal Farm by George Orwell
The iconic Orwell novel that tells an allegorical tale of dictatorship and the cult of personality using farm yard animals as metaphorical character archetypes.
Buy at: amazon.com
6. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
A unforgettable novel set in a time where women have been stripped of all their rights, narrated by a ‘handmaid’ whose only job in life is to serve as a reproducer for the sake of the population.
Buy at: amazon.com
7. Children of Men by P.D. James
Set in the unsettling close future of 2021, Children Of Men tells the story of a world where no more children can be born. That is, until one woman discovers that she is pregnant…
Buy at: amazon.com
8. The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
Now a successful TV show, The Leftovers is a compelling and emotional story about the lives of those who are left behind on Earth after most of the world’s population disappears in a rupture.
Buy at: amazon.com
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Set in the year 2540, Brave New World gives a gripping yet shocking insight in to a futuristic society where a dictatorship has taken over human reproduction and children are bred and allocated to certain positions in life.
Buy at: amazon.com
10. Fahrenheit 541 by Ray Bradbury
A novel that portrays a troubling, unspecified future time when books have become outlawed, and firemen are charged with seeking out forbidden materials and burning them to cinders.
Buy at: amazon.com
11. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
This young adult novel tells the story of a boy named Matt who is cloned from a drug lord, and it examines questions involving the nature of humanity and what really makes us ‘human’.
Buy at: amazon.com
12. The Passage by Justin Cronin
This is a super engrossing novel, unsettlingly set in the year 2016, in which death row patients are injected with a virus that gives them super human strength and vampire-like tendencies!
Buy at: amazon.com
13. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Set in a nightmarish future version of the United Kingdom, A Clockwork Orange tells the story of a young man called Alex who is taken in by the authorities and reformed. Or is he?
Buy at: amazon.com
14. Divergent by Veronica Roth
Another recent successful young adult series, this time set in a society where all young people must choose a personality based faction within their community in which to spend the rest of their lives. But what happens when you diverge from your path?
Buy at: amazon.com
15. The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper
300 years in the future, the U.S. has fractured into different nations after a great war. Men live in warrior camps outside the walls of Women’s Country, in the Pacific Northwest. Within the walls, a sustainable matriarchy where the women and children reside.
Buy at: amazon.com
16. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
A rather enchanting tale about the travels of a band of performers who are operating across the country in the aftermath of a devastating flu epidemic that ruined humanity.
Buy at: amazon.com
17. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
A wonderful novel that explores the themes of human cloning for the purposes of organ harvesting, and whether these clones should be treated in the same way as ‘real’ humans. Indeed, what makes them different at all?
Buy at: amazon.com
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