Dystopian Literary Fiction

A few short years from now, the world is an even more uncertain place than it is today, and politics everywhere is marching rightward: Trump is gone, but Brexit is complete, as is Frexit. Britta, a wife, mother, and successful businesswoman, ignores the daily news and concentrates on her family and her work running a clinic specializing in suicide prevention. But her legitimate business is connected to a secret and far more lucrative operation known as The Bridge, an outfit that supplies terrorist organizations looking to employ suicide bombers.

Jefferies' novel can be seen as an early example of "post-apocalyptic fiction." After some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. The first part of the book, "The Relapse into Barbarism", is the account by some later historian of the fall of civilization and its consequences, with a loving description of nature reclaiming England. The second part, "Wild England", is an adventure set many years later in the wild landscape and society.

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.

On a remote Scottish island, five children are the only ones left. Since the last adult died, sensible Elizabeth has been the group leader, testing for a radio signal, playing teacher and keeping an eye on Alex, the littlest, whose insulin can last only so long. There is 'shopping' to do in the houses they haven't yet searched and wrong smells to avoid. For eight-year-old Rona, each day brings fresh hope that someone will come back for them, tempered by the reality of their dwindling supplies.

Late in the twenty-first century, drought and wildfires prompt an exodus from southern Europe. When twelve-year-old Caleb is separated from his mother during their trek north, he soon falls prey to traffickers. Enslaved in an enclave outside Manchester, the resourceful and determined Caleb never loses hope of bettering himself. After Caleb is befriended by a fellow victim of trafficking, another road opens. Hiding in the woodlands by day, guided by the stars at night, he begins a new journey - to escape to a better life, to meet someone he can trust, and to find his family.

Storms and flooding are worsening around the world, and a mysterious immune disorder has begun to afflict the young. Sophie Perella is about to begin her senior year of high school in Toronto when her little sister, Kira, is diagnosed. Their parents' marriage falters under the strain, and Sophie's mother takes the girls to Oxford, England, to live with their Aunt Irene.

Their story begins with a goodbye. Polly and Frank are young and in love, a lifetime together before them. But one evening in 1981, as the Texas sun sets over their shoulders, the world is suddenly pulled apart by a deadly virus. Within months, Frank is dying. Polly can save him, but only if she agrees to a radical plan: to time travel to 1993 for a corporation who can fund his life-saving treatment. She can only go forward, she cannot go back.

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.

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.

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.

A thick fog rolls in over Shivering Heights. The river overflows, the sky is streaked with toxic green, parasites proliferate in torrential rains, and once safely classified species - humans included - are evolving and behaving in unprecedented ways. Against this poetically hostile backdrop, a biologist, Laura, fights to understand the nature and scope of the changes transforming her own body and the world around her.

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.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. Read by gritty and accomplished actor Philip Glenister from the acclaimed crime series Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.

Welcome to The Egg, an off-campus geodesic dome where David Fuffman and his crew of alienated Princeton students train for what might be the end of days: America is in a perpetual state of war, climate disasters create a global state of emergency, and scientists believe time itself may be collapsing. Funded by the charismatic Mathias Blue and fueled by performance enhancers and psychedelic drugs, a student revolution incubates at The Egg, inspired by the superheroes that dominate American culture. The arrival of Haley Roth - an impassioned heroine with a dark secret - propels David and Mathias to expand their movement across college campuses nationwide.

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 ?