Anyone else absolutely love dystopian literature?

[SweetLeaf1189]

[From wiki:] A dystopia is a vision, of an often futuristic society, which has developed into a negative version of Utopia.

Examples include Anthem by Ayn Rand, 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, The Iron Heel by Jack London, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, V for Vedetta (comic books) by Alan Moore, The Children of Men by P.D. James, The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins...Just to name the ones that I have read. I'd love suggestions.
Already on my list to read:
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

So any more suggestions?

 

[Alice?]

Wow, yep! George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World are some of my all-time favorite books. I'm also starting to read A Clockwork Orange. I've seen movies for V for Vendetta and Children of Men and absolutely loved them, but haven't read the books.

Check out Watchmen by Alan Moore, it changed my life.

If I think of any more, I'll let you know!

 

[NeverAmI]

Blade Runner.

I haven't checked a lot of these out. They are on my list!

 

[SweetLeaf1189]

I'm also starting to read A Clockwork Orange.

It takes a while to read. At least for me. Every other word (as you know) is some kind of slang you've never heard of! It's interesting but can get tiring constantly trying to figure out what he's talking about using context clues and all. I could only read a few pages at a time before getting kind of annoyed. Overall a good book...great movie.

 

[shoeless]

i had to read the giver in the sixth grade. i vaguely remember hating it.
had to read fahrenheit 451 in the eighth grade. i can't remember if i liked it or hated it. the movie was ridiculous, though.
v for vendetta, never read, but i loved the movie.

i dunno. the idea of dystopia appeals to me (...as a work of fiction, not like, you know... a reality) but i haven't read enough to form a proper opinion. i had an idea for a book/screenplay based on the dystopian future, but i never wrote it. not surprisingly.

i heard the road by cormac mccarthy is good, but, well, i tried to read it and i couldn't get past the lack of quotation marks. it drove me insane.

 

[Alice?]

It takes a while to read. At least for me. Every other word (as you know) is some kind of slang you've never heard of! It's interesting but can get tiring constantly trying to figure out what he's talking about using context clues and all. I could only read a few pages at a time before getting kind of annoyed. Overall a good book...great movie.

I totally know what you mean, it takes forever to get through. I haven't seen the movie for it yet, though! I started reading it after someone mentioned it in my philosophy class last semester, but I havem't gotten very far yet because I keep getting distracted by other things .

 

[universe34]

I've either read or plan to read almost every single one of your suggestions. Yes, I love dystopias.

 

[Huxley]

Brave new word, Brave new world: revisited (the essay version of the book with the same name, discussing the dystopian future of our world itself)

Those are my favourites of all time - also I've read V for Vendetta, which in it's own way is better than The Wachowski Brothers motion picture version. The giver is currently undergoing, which in my opinion is a little bit of a poor mans Huxley, and 1984 is awaiting me. Must have forgot something, I'll update if it comes to my mind again.

 

[Cavallier]

Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake are good ones by Atwood.

Windup Girl by Bacigalupi is really good. It's also got some fun steampunk elements.

The Road by McCarthy...not a lot of society but a good post apocalyptic tale.

Hunger Games by Collins is a fun young adult dystopian series.

The Inferior by Peadar O Guilin is very interesting. It has cannibals! I really hope this guy puts out a sequel soon.

 

[Spectrum]

Dystopia's fascinate me as well! I've seen Clockwork Orange, and I'd like to read it. I haven't read any actual books (no wait, there was one but I vaguely remember it) despite seeing a couple of good movies. I keep forgetting to actually pick a good one up. I suppose I'll start with one of the books mentioned here, unless someone wants to recommend me one.

 

[Trebuchet]

Definitely. 1984 is one of my all-time favorite books. I've probably read it 20 times, though I wasn't that crazy about any movies of it. I liked Brave New World and Logan's Run. I hated Fahrenheit 451, however, because I had to write essays on it at school, and the teacher was an idiot.

Another favorite is Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, by Stanislaw Lem. He wrote very good dystopia, and this little surreal book was great. The Futurological Congress, also by Lem, appears at first to be a Utopia, but do not be fooled. I think both of these could be shelved in either humor or horror, depending on mood.

 

[ToddRiemerVISION]

I wanted to let you all know that I just wrote my first novel, Inferno, and it is a work of dystopian fiction. A lot of you have mentioned your interest in George Orwell's 1984, the quintessential dystopian novel, which is one of my all time favorite books and has been a huge inspiration to my own writing.

The dystopian genre and Orwell's ideas are so prevalent in today's times, and I think that there is no other art form more relevant to express the grievances of our modern world. Dystopian art at its center explores the social, political, and economic forces that cause the breaking down of civilization; the incidents, people, and obstacles that seem to rip the world apart at its seams, test our ethics, and show us a vision of our environment inverted directly upon itself.

Today we are on the cusp of a dystopia ourselves as we battle economic recession, high unemployment, corporate disasters like the gulf oil spill, a seemingly endless war in the Middle East, a lack of widespread healthcare, denying individuals the right to marriage, but most of all a communal sense of indifference.

However, we do not live in the first age that has tasted elements of dystopia, for it has been prevalent since the beginning of history, an almost disturbingly natural part of human history. W.B. Yeats, writing just after the First World War, wrote in his haunting poem The Second Coming, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” His words were relevant then, and remain relevant today. The list of historical atrocities that mirror such a dystopian crumbling can be applied to too many incidents of the past to list here.

I hope to have captured at least a small part of Orwell's vision, of Yeats' prophecy, within my own work. I wish to highlight the inequities within our own age by showing a society that has already fallen, a world we could become victim too.

I hope the message of Inferno will inspire you to take action in our own world.

Todd
_____

ToddRiemer.com

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Advertising!

Edit: I guess it has worked because I visited your website.

 

[Audentia]

I have a weird love/hate thing with these books. I've read most of the ones you listed and I loved The Giver, but I'm a hopeless happy ending addict. Negative books disappoint me in a way and I can't help but feel the author wrote them out of their own issues/lost sense of self/feelings of disillusion etc which is sad. That's my feeling speaking though, loss of enchantment and illusions replaced with harsh realities is sad to me. It must be the FP part that fuels my optimistic perspective on life.. I have my moments of seeing reality as stark, but I try to make this go away as soon as humanly possible. I'm a dreamer.

Or perhaps it is the fact that my life has been overly full of harsh realities and so I do not like to spend my reading time experiencing this.

 

[asdfasdfasdfsdf]

simply, yes.
dystopian things make my favorite kind of movies, books, and stories.
read sirens of the titan. it was recommended to me on here, and i would definitely continue the recommendation.

 

[Ermine]

Yes, dystopian literature is amazing. I've read most of the suggestions in the OP. And for those who haven't read V for Vendetta, it's a must. I think it's much more powerful, just because the graphic novel makes a good case for full on anarchy rather than democracy which was used in the movie. And the illustration is simple enough that it encourages a lot of mental imaging.

Now that I think about it, 3/4 of the fiction books I own are dystopian.

 

[Night Runner]

The Passage by Justin Cronin was a fun read. (It's about retarded telepathic zombie vampires and the dark, dark future. )

 

[DarkGreen]

Gregor the Overlander. >u< I love distopias it's just there's so many possibilities to theorize about, right?

 

[wires]

It's one of my favorite types of fiction.
So, yes.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

i had to read the giver in the sixth grade. i vaguely remember hating it.

What!? I loved The Giver!
It has greatly inspired my worldview since reading it in 6th grade also. It represented the way I felt at the time and even now, how I'm basically an outcast with the burden of having the knowledge of the world and being obligated to save people from their own incompetence.

Maybe it's because you aren't INTP, but I thought it perfectly captured the essence of being one.

 

[lightspeed]

[From wiki:] A dystopia is a vision, of an often futuristic society, which has developed into a negative version of Utopia.

Examples include Anthem by Ayn Rand, 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, V for Vedetta (comic books) by Alan Moore

So any more suggestions?

I edited your original post to show all of the ones I have read. Yes, I love dystopian literature! You nailed it.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I enjoy the theme more than literature specifically. I like reading books, but large ones always make me weary before becoming engrossed in the story. I'd rather watch a movie or play a game, at the risk of losing imagination.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

Anthem by Ayn Rand was one of the only books i actually read and liked. I read it in AP english. My teacher gave me anothe ayn rand book called fountain head. Some college prof told me it changed his life, maybe i should read it....

I also liked the illustrated man, and other cool short stories by ray bradbury..I also love that post apacalyptic literature..we actually did a whole chapter on it in 10th grade english...good shit.

 

[Traianus]

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are two of my favorite books of all time. Do yourself a favor and read them. Excellent excellent books.

I know this is an old thread, but w/e I'll add my $0.02 anyway and say that I also love dystopian/apocalyptic literature. A couple favorites are 1984, Brave New World, The Road (god that book is bleak), The Stand, Earth Abides, etc, etc.

 

[Amor Anti]

YES.
Plus its friends, post-apocalyptic and cyperpunk.

There's also Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (Which the movie Blade Runner is based on), Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

For young adult fiction, I know you mentioned The Hunger Games trilogy and The Giver, but there's also the amazing Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld and Feed by M.T. Anderson. Seriously, Feed is one of the best books I've ever read. I don't care how old you are, READ IT. It's about a future where everyone basically has the internet implanted in their brains.

I'm actually doing an essay on The Road and I incoporated dystopian fiction into a presentation on the relationship between thought and language (specifically 1984 and Feed). My teachers are probably a little worried about the direction of my thoughts.

 

[Jesse]

I like the few I've read but they usually go down the same traps of trying to stop the dystopia. Like the Hunger Games. The first was a brutal story where there was no fighting the system hence a little rebellion seems like a lot. The other two books degenerated into how can can the author create a situation in which the dystopia falls. I find it a lot more interesting when there is no possible way to stop the Dystopia except maybe to escape it or something. Also The Road is post-apocolytic not dystopian. It's still a good book but way to short to what it was aiming for. I liked V, the movie but maybe that was just because of Portmam.

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

Dystopia is right outside your front door.

(*note the definition in the OP says often futuristic society, not exclusively futuristic.)

Personally, I could use a glimmer of hope in my futuristics. I don't always seek it and have enjoyed some of the books mentioned here. A tyranical one world government and a monochromatic environment to whoever can guess which ones I didn't.

 

[Jesse]

Well it can't be The Road. There is 0 hope in that one.

 

[snafupants]

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are two of my favorite books of all time. Do yourself a favor and read them. Excellent excellent books.

I know this is an old thread, but w/e I'll add my $0.02 anyway and say that I also love dystopian/apocalyptic literature. A couple favorites are 1984, Brave New World, The Road (god that book is bleak), The Stand, Earth Abides, etc, etc.

the stand was epic; the road not so much. various richard bachman books incidentally fall into the dystopian genre - the running man and the long walk. has anyone read bend sinister?

 

[Amor Anti]

Well it can't be The Road. There is 0 hope in that one.

Just from the standpoint of literary analysis; not true. Yeah, the setting might seem hopeless, but the characters themselves offer plenty of hope.

But, for example, Brave New World and 1984 are completely hopeless. The endings of those books stick with you.

 

[Jesse]

Sure the character give lot's of hope of dealing with things with emotion and hope even after it seems like they are gone. I'm just saying the setting looks like it's the end of humanity very very soon.

 

[gephura]

This is my dystopian reading list (got it from Wikipedia): what I read is in yellow


19th century

• A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation, in the Year of Our Lord, 19-- (1835) by Oliver Bolokitten[1]
• The World As It Shall Be (1846) by Emile Souvestre
• Paris in the 20th Century (1863) by Jules Verne
• The Fixed Period (1882) by Anthony Trollope
• The Republic of the Future (1887) by Anna Bowman Dodd
• A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888) by James De Mille
• Caesar's Column (1890) by Ignatius L. Donnelly
• Pictures of the Socialistic Future (1890) by Eugen Richter
• The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells
• When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) by H. G. Wells

20th century
1900s
• The First Men in the Moon (1901) by H. G. Wells[5]
• The Scarlet Empire (1906) by David MacLean Parry
• The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London[5]
• Lord of the World (1908) by Robert Hugh Benson
• The Machine Stops (1909) by E. M. Forster[5]
• Die Andere Seite (The Other Side) (1909) by Alfred Kubin[citation needed]
1910s
• The Flying Inn (1914), by G. K. Chesterton
• Meccania, the Super-State (1918), by Owen Gregory
1920s
• We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin[5]
• The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka
1930s
• Blokken (1931) by Ferdinand Bordewijk
• Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
• Kazohinia (1935) by Sándor Szathmári
• It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis
• Swastika Night (1937) by Katharine Burdekin
• Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand
1940s
• Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler
• "If This Goes On—" (1940) by Robert A. Heinlein
• Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye
• That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis
• Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
• Bend Sinister (1947) by Vladimir Nabokov
• Ape and Essence (1948) by Aldous Huxley
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell
1950s
• Limbo, (vt. Limbo 90) (1952) by Bernard Wolfe
• Player Piano (also known as Utopia 14) (1952) by Kurt Vonnegut
• Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
• One (also published as Escape to Nowhere) (1953) by David Karp
• The Space Merchants (1953) by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
• The Chrysalids (1955) by John Wyndham
• Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand
• The Glass Bees (1957) by Ernst Junger
• Kazohinia (1958) by Sándor Szathmári
• The Million Cities (August, 1958) by J. T. McIntosh
• Level 7 (1959) by Mordecai Roshwald
1960s
• Facial Justice (1960) by L. P. Hartley
• Harrison Bergeron (1961) by Kurt Vonnegut
• A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
• The Wanting Seed (1962) by Anthony Burgess
• Cloud On Silver (US title Sweeney's Island) (1964) by John Christopher
• Nova Express (1964) by William S. Burroughs
• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (1965) by Harlan Ellison
• Make Room! Make Room! (1966) by Harry Harrison[5]
• The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein[citation needed]
• Logan's Run (1967) by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick
• Stand on Zanzibar (1968) by John Brunner
• Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Jagged Orbit (1969) by John Brunner
1970s
• This Perfect Day (1970) by Ira Levin
• THX-1138 (1971) by Ben Bova
• The Lathe of Heaven (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Smith's Dream (1971) by C. K. Stead
• The World Inside (1971) by Robert Silverberg
• Metropole (1971) by Ferenc Karinthy
• The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1973) by Stanisław Lem
• The Stepford Wives (1973) by Ira Levin
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) by Philip K. Dick
• House of Stairs (1974) by William Sleator
• The Shockwave Rider (1975) by John Brunner[5]
• High Rise (1975) by JG Ballard
• A World Out of Time (1976) by Larry Niven
• A Scanner Darkly (1977) Philip K. Dick
• 1985 (1978) by Anthony Burgess
• The Feelies (Novel) (1978) by Mick Farren
• IQ 83 (1978) by Arthur Herzog
• The Turner Diaries (1978) by William Luther Pierce
• Yawning Heights (1978) by Aleksandr Zinovyev
• Alongside Night (1979) by J. Neil Schulman
• The Long Walk (1979) by Stephen King, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman
1980s
• Mockingbird (1980) by Walter Tevis
• The Running Man (1982) by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman
• V For Vendetta (1982–1988) by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
• And Still the Earth (1983) by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão
• Sprawl trilogy (1984) - (1988) by William Gibson
• Dayworld trilogy (1985) by Philip José Farmer
• The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
• The Last Election (1986) by Pete Davies
• Moscow 2042 (1986) by Vladimir Voinovich
• The Shore of Women (1986) by Pamela Sargent
• Ambient (1987) by Jack Womack
• Drowning Towers (1987) by George Turner
• In the Country of Last Things(1987) by Paul Auster
• Obernewtyn Chronicles (1987–2008) by Isobelle Carmody
• Sea of Glass (1987) by Barry B. Longyear
• The Domination (1988) by S. M. Stirling[23]
• Terraplane (1988) by Jack Womack
• Chung Kuo (1989) by David Wingrove
• Dystopia (1989) by Dennis Jürgensen
1990s
• Heathern (1990) by Jack Womack
• My Melancholy Face (1991) by Heinrich Böll
• Fatherland (1992) by Robert Harris
• The Children of Men (1992) by P.D. James
• The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) by Starhawk
• The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry
• Invitation to the Game (1993) by Monica Hughes
• Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler
• Virtual Light (1994) by William Gibson
• Gun, with Occasional Music (1994) by Jonathan Lethem
• The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995) by Neal Stephenson
• Blindness (1998) by Jose Saramago
• Battle Royale (1999) by Koushun Takami[29]
21st century
2000s
• P.E.A.C.E. (2000) by Guy Holmes
• Feed (2002) by M. T. Anderson[30]
• Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood
• Jennifer Government (2003) by Max Barry
• Manna (2003) by Marshall Brain
• The Bar Code Tattoo (2004) by Suzanne Weyn
• Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell
• Divided Kingdom (2005) by Rupert Thomson
• The Possibility of an Island (2005) by Michel Houellebecq
• The Traveler (2005) by John Twelve Hawks[citation needed]
• Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Uglies (2005) by Scott Westerfeld
• Bar Code Rebellion (2006) by Suzanne Weyn
• The Book of Dave (2006) by Will Self
• Wizard of the Crow (2006) by Ngugi Wa Thiongo
• The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
• Sunshine Assassins (2006) by John F. Miglio
• Metro 2033 (2006) by Dmitry Glukhovsky
• Chez Max (2006) by Jakob Arjouni
• Genesis (2006) by Bernard Beckett
• Veracity (2007) by Mark Lavorato
• Blind Faith (2007) by Ben Elton
• The Pesthouse (2007) by Jim Crace
• The Declaration (2008) by Gemma Malley
• Truancy (2008) by Isamu Fukui
• The Hunger Games (2008) by Suzanne Collins
• The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008) by Patrick Ness
• The Ask and the Answer (2009) by Patrick Ness
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009) by Carrie Ryan
• Proyecto#194 (2009) by Alberto López González
• Fahrenheit 56K (2009) by Fernando de Querol Alcaraz
• Far North (2009) by Marcel Theroux
• Catching Fire (2009) by Suzanne Collins
• The Maze Runner (2009) by James Dashner
• Shades of Grey (2009) by Jasper Fforde
• The Unit (2009) by Ninni Holmqvist
• The Year of the Flood (2009) by Margaret Atwood
2010s
• Monsters of Men (2010) by Patrick Ness
• Utopia For The Devil (2010) by James Parkes
• Mockingjay (2010) by Suzanne Collins

 

[Chasm]

Well, from that list I've read Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange, Animal Farm, Sprawl Trilogy (+ The Road and Jennifer Government but I didn't finish those... I'll probably finish The Road some time in the future though) - so yeah, I do like dystopian literature.

Something about the extremeties of the worlds depicted in these books (extreme decline of the society, extreme control etc.) is fascinating.

 

[aaaw]

I love the genre too. Brave New World is my all time favourite.

 

[Darby]

I don't read too much anymore but when I did, dystopian literature was everything, I still only really enjoy dystopian movies and shows also. Going to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep after I finish the H. P. Lovecraft book I got.

 

[opheliaesque]

alksdhfasdfasd I love (almost) everything dystopian, especially if it includes anything by KAFKA or H.G WELLS. The Trail and The Time Machine may be one of my favorite books I've ever read, though not taking into account Kafka's other, more existentially inclined books.

Brave New World bored me immensely.