Dystopian Literary Fiction

John Hill and Marvino Buck sit in a prison cell, watching the world fall apart on the news. Janay Williamson, a guard at the Cook County Jail, finds herself surrounded by violent men when civilization begins to crumble. Henry Haynes is a doctor in the middle of his shift when he notices the hospital is eerily silent. None of them knew the world would end that day. Now that it has, they all will have to fight to stay alive. With the world collapsing all around them, death seems imminent. Surviving quickly becomes all that there is.

Over the course of a single night in 2052, a homeless man named Cuthbert Handley sets out on an astonishing quest: to release the animals of the London Zoo. When he was a young boy, Cuthbert's grandmother had told him he inherited a magical ability to communicate with the animal world - a gift she called the Wonderments. Ever since his older brother's death in childhood, Cuthbert has heard voices.

In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they've walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford fixed addresses. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland.

What if a demented London cabbie called Dave Rudman wrote a book to his estranged son to give him some fatherly advice? What if that book was buried in Hampstead and hundreds of years later, when rising sea levels have put London underwater, spawned a religion? What if one man decided to question life according to Dave? And what if Dave had indeed made a mistake?

Twins Virginia and Tommy Matthews have been on their own since they were orphaned at the age of five, surviving a merciless foster care system by relying on each other. Twelve years later, the world begins to collapse around them as a deadly contagion steadily wipes out entire populations and a devastating world war rages on for the cure. When Tommy is drafted for the war, the twins are faced with a choice: stay and accept their fate of almost certain death or run. Virginia and Tommy flee into the dark night.

Raised in a privileged community of wealthy survivalists on an idyllic, self-sustaining Oregon ranch, Marlo has always been insulated. The outside world, which the ranchers call “the Disaster”, is a casualty of ravaging climate change, a troubled landscape on the brink of catastrophe. For as long as Marlo can remember, the unknown that lies beyond the borders of her utopia has been a curious obsession. But just as she plans her escape into the chaos of the real world, a charismatic new resident gives her a compelling reason to stay.

In deze spannende surrealistische roman merken vijf willekeurige personen op een dag in de toekomst een merkwaardige geur op, een walm. Daar blijft het echter niet bij en de walm ontwikkelt zich tot een onverdraaglijke stank. Eerst zijn ze bang dat het om terrorisme gaat, of een milieuramp, en al snel gaan wetenschappers aan de slag om een verklaring te vinden voor de mysterieuze stank. Terwijl het zich over de wereld verspreidt als een epidemie worden de levens van de vijf personen steeds meer overhoop gehaald. Totdat ze tot een hele bijzondere conclusie komen over de oorzaak ervan.

As Mumbai empties under the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation, statistician Sarita can only think of being reunited with her physicist husband. To find him, she must journey across the surreal landscape of a near-abandoned city, braving gangs of competing Hindu and Muslim hoodlums. Joining her is Jaz - a Muslim whose true religion has always been sex. Danger lurks around every corner, but so does the absurd: the patron goddess Devi Mahas even materialized on a beach to save her city....

Vauhini Vara's debut novel begins in India in the 1950s, following a young man born into a Dalit family of coconut farmers in a remote village in Andhra Pradesh. King Rao, as he comes to be known, later moves to the US, where he studies in Seattle, meeting the love of his life and his business partner, the smart and self-assured Margie. King Rao ultimately rises up through Silicon Valley to become the most famous tech CEO in the world and the leader of a powerful, corporate-owned global government. Yet he ultimately ends up living on a remote island.

In Ayn Rand’s Anthem, humankind has entered a dark age at some point in the unspecified future. Individuality is no longer permitted, and people are assigned roles to fulfill in their lives. The work's protagonist, Equality 7-2521, is given an undesirable job as a punishment for thinking for himself and desiring to become a scientist instead. The novella outlines his journey as he starts to commit more “crimes” against society, such as desiring a companion of his own choosing, discovering electricity, and ultimately fleeing from his leaders.

‘Jane Smith', a software manager in her late 40s who lives in the Pacific Northwest receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit inside. In the storage unit is a taxidermied hummingbird and salamander. Along with a list of five more animals, signed ‘Love, Silvina'. The hummingbird and salamander turn out to be among the most endangered species in the world, the taxidermy commissioned by a notorious wildlife trafficking criminal.

Narrated by Lynn, a 23-year-old who was 12 when war and flu struck and she, her uncle, her mother and her brother left their town in Alaska for the remote Yukon territory. Since then she's grown up in isolation, a surly neighbour three miles away the only human contact outside her family.

For 12 years, Aina and Whitney have been in exile on an island for a crime they committed together, tethered to a croft by pills they must take for survival every eight hours. They’ve kept busy - Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music, Whitney with his sculptures and maps - but something is not right. Shipwrecks have begun washing up, and their supply drops have stopped. And on the day they’re meant to be collected for parole, the Warden does not come. Instead there’s a sheep. But sheep can’t swim.

רפובליקת גלעד מציעה לשֶלְפְרֶד אופציה אחת בלבד: ללדת ילדים. אם לא תעשה זאת, היא צפויה, כמו כל מתנגדי המשטר, להיתלות על החומה או להישלח אל אחת המושבות ולמות שם מוות אטי ממחלת קרינה. אבל גם תנאי חיים דכאניים אינם יכולים למחוק את התשוקה המינית - לא שלה עצמה ולא של שני הגברים שעתידהּ תלוי בהם. סיפורה של שפחה, חזון מבריק של אמריקה במאה ה-21, כתוב באירוניה מזעזעת ונותן ביטוי מלא לכישרונה האדיר של מרגרט אטווד, לשנינותה ולכושר ההבחנה החודר שלה. זהו תרגיל מופלא במדע בדיוני כמו גם סיפור מוסר כן במיוחד.

Cole Pateras is the fastidious and calculating firstborn son in the most powerful family left on a burned-out planet. When there is haunting news of someone from his past, Cole begins to question the character he plays and his role in the empire that reigns over the remnants of humanity.

It is 2085 and Laisve is learning to use the ancient waterways to travel through water and time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as The Brook, she discovers a talisman that will connect her with people from the past two centuries, including a squad of laborers at work on a huge national monument to liberty. As waters rise and a police state encroaches, Laisve must find her way back to the early days of her imperfect country, to forge a bond that might save all their lives—and their shared dream of freedom.

In Neuamerika leben die Menschen nach dem Gesetz der Natur. Auch Gaia Marinos muss sich diesen Regeln beugen. Versteckt in den Wäldern lebt sie das Leben einer Aussätzigen und hat den anderen doch eines voraus: In einer Welt ohne schriftliche Aufzeichnungen kann sie lesen. Als sie in Gefangenschaft gerät, rettet ihr diese Fähigkeit das Leben. Gaia macht es sich zur Aufgabe, die letzten Bücher der Erde zu finden, doch als diese Mission zu scheitern droht, muss sie sich entscheiden.

The Ark was built to save the lives of the many but rapidly became a refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning. Years after the Ark was cut off from the world - a world much like our own, but in which slavery has never existed - a chance of survival within the Ark's confines is granted to a select few who can prove their worth. Among their number is Markriss Denny, whose path to future excellence is marred only by a closely guarded secret: Without warning, his spirit leaves his body, allowing him to see and experience a world far beyond his physical limitations.

Une muraille opaque de brouillard et ses cohortes de monstres avancent inexorablement vers Eden. La Grande Tempête qui a balayé l'Amérique reviendra-t-elle détruire la nouvelle civilisation que les Pans, les enfants étrangement épargnés par le cataclysme, tentent de créer ? Sauront-ils déjouer les complots du Buveur d'Innocence ? L'Alliance des Trois pourra-t-elle s'opposer à la menace d'Entropia, royaume du chaos et de la mort ?

While on vacation on an idyllic island called Miden, a seemingly aimless woman meets an attractive man and leaves her country to be with him. A few months later, newly pregnant and just beginning to feel comfortable in her lover's space, her life is upended when a girl arrives at the door. Slight and pretty, the girl discloses a drawn out and violent affair she's had with her professor, the father of the woman's unborn child. In alternating perspectives, the professor and his girlfriend reflect upon their lives, each other, and their interloper.