Dystopia is that disturbing place where some of your friends say you are headed in a handbasket, and everyone’s talking about it with the movie debut of The Hunger Games this weekend. So what’s your favorite or most respected dystopia?
Robert Collins has a good list of ten in The Guardian.
Shane Dayton of Listverse has his own list of 12 (with some natural overlap).
What do you think?
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I would put The Giver on any list of good dystopia, if for no other reason than that it introduced me to the genre. Love that book.
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 would be on there, too. The image of a world without books horrified me, but I loved the portrayal of those who fought against the system, even knowing that their world was doomed, at least for a time. The moment where Montag spontaneous begins reciting what he thought he’d forgotten, as his city burns, is magnificent.
I’ve read both 1984 and Brave New World, and definitely prefer BNW. As an introvert, the picture of a world in which it is odd and antisocial to be alone felt frighteningly familiar.
(I’d also add the Hunger Games, which I love, and perhaps City of Ember to any list of good dystopias.)
A dystopia is the type of world in which superheroes rise up, isn’t it? Don’t you need great tribulation for great heroes step forward?
My favorite dystopia would be the one portrayed in “Wolf Time,” by Lars Walker.
Yes, I hear that’s a good one.
I was going to mention Lars Walker’s Wolf Time, but I see other commenters beat me to it. 🙂
C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, like Lars’s, is perhaps not so much a dystopian novel as a novel showing a near-future step towards realization of such.
Perhaps Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go should be listed as a true dystopian novel.
…No, my mistake, Wolf Time surely is a true dystopian novel. I glanced at a copy last night. My memory had failed me … despite the fact that I’ve read it three times! But the last time was over five years ago, so it’s time for a rereading.
Phil: Regarding Dystopias, often there is no heroic reclamation of things on a global scale. Sometimes individual characters find shards of hope, as in Fahrenheit 451, but many end as gloomily as does 1984.
For myself, I’m fond of the film Brazil and the novel Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. The dystopia I find most disturbing is Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack, mostly because it feels not too far from where we really could go, if things go off the rails. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is pretty great too.