Best Dystopian Novels

Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It discusses how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, but with disastrous results.

Fahrenheit 451 takes place in an unspecified future time in a hedonistic anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control. This America is filled with lawlessness in the streets ranging from teenagers crashing cars into people to firemen at a station who set their 'mechanical hound' to hunt various animals by their scent for the simple and grotesque pleasure of watching them die. Anyone caught reading or possessing illegal books is, at the minimum, confined to a mental hospital while the books are burned by the firemen. Illegal books mainly include famous works of literature, such as Walt Whitman and William Faulkner, as well as the Bible and all historical texts.

It is set in a society which is at first presented as a utopian society and gradually appears more and more dystopian. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness," a plan that has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who stores all the past memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed to aid in decisions that others lack the experience to make. Jonas learns the truth about his dystopian society and struggles with its weight.

The Chrysalids (United States title: Re-Birth) is a science fiction novel by John Wyndham, first published in 1955 by Michael Joseph. It is the least typical of Wyndham's major novels, but regarded by some as his best. An early manuscript version was entitled Time for a Change. An undetermined number of years into the future, post-apocalypse rural Labrador has become a warmer and more hospitable place than it is at present. The inhabitants of Labrador have vague historical recollections of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilisation which existed long ago and which they believe was destroyed when God sent "Tribulation" to the world to punish their forebears' sins. The society that has survived in Labrador is loosely reminiscent of the American frontier during the 18th century, with a level of technology in use similar to the Amish of the present-day United States.

The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth.

Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown"-the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. The novel tells the story of a washed-up computer hacker hired by a mysterious employer to pull off the ultimate hack.

Article 5 is a 2012 young adult dystopian novel by Kristen Simmons. The novel tells the story of Ember Miller and Chase Jennings, two teenagers who are on the run from the government in a post-War dystopian America. It was followed by two sequels titled Breaking Point and Three. A war has torn through the United States, leading to the implementing of the Federal Bureau of Reformation (FBR) and a re-writing of the Bill of Rights, leaving the Moral Statues. The FBR have started a new war, and that's a war on sex. Women that break Article 5 and have children out of wedlock are taken away and imprisoned, as is the case with Ember Miller's mother.

The Host is a science fiction/romance novel by Stephenie Meyer. The novel introduces an alien race, called Souls, which takes over the Earth and its inhabitants. The book describes one Soul's predicament when the mind of its human host refuses to cooperate with her takeover. The Host was released on May 6, 2008 with an initial print run of 750,000 copies. An international version of the novel was released on April 2, 2008 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, and Hong Kong by the UK publishing division.[3] It was translated into Catalan, Chinese, Japanese, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian, Hebrew and Danish among others. The prologue and the fourth chapter of the book can be found on Meyer's official website.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (retitled Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in some later printings) is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. First published in 1968, the novel is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth's life has been greatly damaged by nuclear global war. Most animal species are endangered or extinct from extreme radiation poisoning, so that owning an animal is now a sign of status and empathy, an attitude encouraged towards animals. The book served as the primary basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner.

The Drowned World is a 1962 science fiction novel by J. G. Ballard. In contrast to much post-apocalyptic fiction, the novel features a central character who, rather than being disturbed by the end of the old world, is enraptured by the chaotic reality that has come to replace it. The novel is an expansion of an out of print novella of the same title published in Science Fiction Adventures magazine in January 1962, Vol. 4, No. 24. The Drowned World opens within the conventions of a hard science fiction novel, as the catastrophe responsible for the apocalypse is explained scientifically - solar radiation has caused the polar ice-caps to melt and worldwide temperature to soar, leaving the cities of northern Europe and America submerged in beautiful and haunting tropical lagoons. Yet Ballard's novel is thematically more complex than is immediately apparent. Ballard uses the post-apocalyptic world of the story to mirror the collective unconscious desires of the main characters.[2] A theme throughout Ballard's writing is the idea that human beings construct their surroundings to reflect their unconscious drives. In The Drowned World, however, a natural catastrophe causes the real world to transform itself into a dream landscape, causing the central characters to regress mentally.

Uglies is a 2005 science fiction novel by Scott Westerfeld. It is set in a future post scarcity dystopian world in which everyone is turned "Pretty" by extreme cosmetic surgery upon reaching age 16. It tells the story of teenager Tally Youngblood who rebels against society's enforced conformity, after her newfound friends Shay and David show her the downsides to becoming a "Pretty".

Oryx and Crake is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and "adventure romance" rather than science fiction because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do" and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. It describes an America with a divided society: a rich getting richer and a segregated oppressed poor, who are kept away from the rich. Corporations dominate and control the population, aided by gene manipulation. A complex and vivid plot, it hypothesises the consequences of prioritising short-term scientific progress over long-term responsibility.

The Hunger Games is written in first person and introduces sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where the countries of North America once existed. This is where a government working in a central city called the Capitol holds power.

Logan's Run is a dystopian movie about the future where people are killed at age 30 to prevent over-population. The story follows Logan, a "Sandman" charged with enforcing the rule for people to try to escape their early death. Ultimately, Logan himself runs when he becomes too old...

We (Russian: ??) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921. The novel was first published in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York in an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state where everyone lives and works behind glass.

The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men of its population. The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment's calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions.

The Windup Girl is a biopunk science fiction novel. The novel was Paolo Bacigalupi's debut novel and published by Night Shade Books on September 1, 2009. The novel was named as the ninth best fiction book of 2009 by TIME magazine, and as the best science fiction book of the year in the Reference and User Services Association's 2010 Reading List. This book is a 2010 Nebula Award and a 2010 Hugo Award winner (tied with The City & the City by China Mieville for the Hugo Award), both for best novel. This book also won the 2010 Compton Crook Award and the 2010 Locus Award for best first novel.