I haven't read that many. Read 1984 a few days ago - which was good. I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream is ok-ish. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was ok-ish. Maybe I should just give up and read A Brave New World
Hasn't H.G. Wells written something dystopian too?
If you liked 1984, you might be interested in the "prototype", which Orwell may well have read (in translation at least, not sure if he knew Russian) prior to writing his: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
And yes, you should also read BNW — and F451, if you haven't already.
H.G. Wells' (When) The Sleeper (A)Wakes (seems to have been re-published under several variants over the years) is also pretty dystopic as I recall, as is John Wyndham's The Chrysalids. The latter might be too juvenile for you, though — plus it has a happy ending, or at least the promise of one
If you can accept post-apocalyptic fiction as a subgenre of dystopian fiction, I think the best one I've read recently was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014).
(Cover image and Goodreads synopsis. No spoilers.)
Spoiler:
Goodreads said:
Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
It won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award. I'm not sure how prestigious an award that is, except that I notice the runners-up that year were also books I enjoyed, M.R. Carey's The Girl With All the Gifts and Emmi Itäranta's Memory of Water (both of which were also set in dystopian futures, come to think of it, so I guess I can recommend them both here).
I love Mandel's writing style, so for me it's not just about the story. In fact, if I were to rank the aspects of the book I liked, the story would be in 3rd-place, behind the writing and the characters. The setting - a post-plague post-apocalypse - has been done so many times the book actually has an uphill battle, in that regard. The characters being a traveling performance troop is unusual, though, as opposed to, like, mercs fighting Bad Guys or scientists seeking The Cure or whatever. There's no mythic heroic quest, and the fact that the characters were a little more normal actually made them a little more interesting, I thought.
Paolo Bacigalupi has written a few dystopias. The Windup Girl (2009) was probably the best.
(Cover image and Goodreads synopsis. No spoilers.)
Spoiler:
Bookreads said:
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
Fair warning, I thought it started incredibly slowly and it took me a while to get on board. Unlike Mandel, Bacigalupi's writing style didn't immediately gel with me, and I had to work a little. This one won the 2010 Hugo Award, tied with China Mieville's The City and the City (another dystopia - sheesh, they're everywhere). The setting is outstanding, and the characters were nice, once I got around the corner on it.
I'm a fan of Mieville's books, generally, and I thought The City and the City was his least exciting, but I guess I could recommend that, too (although I tried watching the television series adaptation, and it couldn't hold my attention). Bacigalupi's Shipbreaker was also good, and also dystopian, but it's marketed as "YA" if that puts you off at all. But if you love it, it has two sequels, which I haven't read. I found The Water Knife a bit of a struggle, and I don't think I finished it.
EDIT: If we're throwing cyberpunk onto the dystopian fire - and why wouldn't we? - I'll add Nicola Griffith's Slow River (1995).
Spoiler:
Goodreads said:
She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van Oesterling had been the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she was nobody, and she had to hide.
Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped...but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed.
Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and creating a new future.
But to start again, Lore required Spanner's talents--Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner's game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van Oesterling to be paid. Only by confronting her family, her past, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be.
Attwood's dystopian novels are excellent. Both the Maddaddam trilogy and The Handmaid's Tale and its sequel. The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick is excellent but more alternate history than dystopian.
You should read Brave New World and A Canticle for Liebowitz. Right now! Go!
Attwood's dystopian novels are excellent. Both the Maddaddam trilogy and The Handmaid's Tale and its sequel. The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick is excellent but more alternate history than dystopian.
You should read Brave New World and A Canticle for Liebowitz. Right now! Go!
I've had both the book and the television series of The Handmaid's Tale queued up for like 3 years and I haven't been able to pull the trigger on either one, because I've been too scared.
I've had both the book and the television series of The Handmaid's Tale queued up for like 3 years and I haven't been able to pull the trigger on either one, because I've been too scared.
The Revelation Space series is sci-fi, and has a vast world of cultures. Many of them dystopian in a different way, and then the author has them struggle against each other.
I was fascinated the whole time, and then near the end I realized how depressed the series made me.
Bradbury is first who comes to mind. Either 451 or short stories.
Brave New World seemed more like satire to me, rather than dystopia. But definitely worth reading.
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