Dystopian novels as disturbing as 1984
Let these dystopian visions of the future alter how you see the world around you now.
A lot has changed since the publication of 1984 in 1949, but one thing remains the same: we are still fascinated by dystopian stories. On the surface, George Orwell's vision differs substantially from the worlds dreamt up by the authors that followed him. But these novels all share a curiosity—whether expressed through anthropomorphized surveillance like Big Brother, a penal code based on physical attributes, or a civil war sparked by climate change—about the future implications of contemporary social problems. Like 1984, these novels take us to surprising places, even if they're not all wholly unpredictable.
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
In this sparse and haunting novel, set in a future U.S. defined by total state surveillance, a grieving widow attempts to raise her child as best she can, despite endless internal and external obstacles. In this version of America, a system of additional shadows has replaced incarceration. Instead of being sent to prison, anyone who commits a crime is given a second shadow, marking them as a "Shadester" and stripping them of most of their civil rights. After her wife dies in childbirth, Kris, already with a second shadow, is left to raise her kid, also a Shadester, alone. Crane's dystopian vision is both singular and familiar, and this is what makes the book so good, and so painful. It's gorgeously written, darkly funny, and full of complicated questions about community accountability, redemption, and forgiveness.
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Our Missing Hearts
Acclaimed novelist Celeste Ng's latest novel explores the power of words and stories, the violence of censorship, and the legacies of racism, especially anti-Asian racism, in present and future America. Twelve-year-old Bird lives with his dad in a world like and unlike our own. Under a set of brutal new laws designed to combat ongoing violence and economic turmoil, all "unpatriotic" art has been banned, and authorities have the power to legally kidnap the children of dissenters. Among the many banned books are the works of Bird's mother, a Chinese American poet who vanished from his life when he was a child. Determined to find her again, he undertakes a journey that provides devastating answers to some of his long-held questions, and sparks an unexpected hope inside him.
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Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler's gritty and grim yet beloved dystopian classic, set in the 2020s, is not a book to venture into lightly. Butler's vision of a world decimated by rampant capitalism, climate change, and unchecked violence is sometimes hard to take, especially since much of the systemic injustice she describes is so familiar. But the story of Lauren Olamina, a young woman determined to change the world she was born into, no matter what it takes, is not merely bleak. It's a thoughtful adventure about fierce love, community activism, and the small actions that inspire revolutions.
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American War
American War is a novel with a dark question at its heart: what would happen if America followed its worst impulses to their most extreme conclusion? In the 2070s, in a world destroyed by climate change, a Second American Civil War breaks out, and most of the Deep South, refusing federal mandates to cease the use of fossil fuels,secedes from the union. Sarat is only a child during the war, and she grows up in a refugee camp that's nearly as dangerous as the war itself, where nothing is as it seems. It's a brutal but powerful book about the intimate human costs of global tragedies.
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Future Home of the Living God
Louise Erdrich is best known for her historical fiction, but her mastery extends to speculative fiction easily in this novel. Newly pregnant, and thinking about her child's future, twenty-something Cedar is excited to meet her Ojibwe birth family for the first time. But her pregnancy comes at a time of massive political upheaval: evolution has started to run backwards and no one knows what will happen to newborns, so pregnant people are being rounded up and imprisoned. Though serious in theme, this book is full of big-hearted characters doing their best to help each other through impossible times. Readers looking for dystopian novels that won't leave them feeling hopeless should definitely check it out.
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How High We Go in the Dark
This is a heartbreaking book of interconnected stories about a deadly plague that forces humanity to find new ways of being in the world. It begins with a grieving scientist working in the Arctic Circle. His discovery of the body of a girl who died of an ancient disease changes the course of history forever. From there, the narrative spans centuries and continents, as a group of interconnected characters strive to find hope, strength, and the will to survive—despite endless loss and strife. Like the best dystopian novels, How High We Go in the Dark asks a lot of thorny questions and doesn't offer any easy answers—only a collection of moments and possibilities to ponder.
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Blackfish City
Taking place on a massive floating city in the Arctic, constructed after a series of climate wars renders most of the planet uninhabitable Blackfish City is supposed to be a model for humanity, built to function in harmony with what's left of the natural world. But it’s a promise unfulfilled: inequality is the norm, government corruption runs rampant, and a new plague causes social chaos. The story follows the interconnected lives of four characters trying to make their way through this strange, unpredictable world.
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Julia
In Orwell's classic novel, Winston Smith's psychological breaking point is reached when under torture he denounces Julia Worthing, his colleague and secret lover. In this re-telling, we get to know Julia, a popular young woman and something of an ideal citizen of Oceania: she repeats slogans as required of her and happily accepts that believing in nothing is for the best. But when she decides one day to slip her colleague Winston a note, the ramifications are beyond Julia's imagining, and largely left out of Orwell's telling—leaving novelist and popular literary critic Sandra Newman to fill in the blanks.
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