im looking for dystopian books that feel uncomfortably close to our world — authoritarianism, corruption, abuse of power, hierarchy, propaganda, psychological control, moral decay. like its focused on realistic human systems, not fantasy evil.
i wanna read something disturbing and thought-provoking thats gonna leave me unsettled because it feels like it could exist (or already does).
by shreksleftstesticle
19 Comments
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
1984….quintessential
Prophet Song
1984 Graphic Novel, Parable of the Sower
The handmaid’s tale.
Parable of the Sower+Parable of the Talents. Youre in for a ride.
Unauthorized Bread, by Cory Doctorow. It’s one of his novellas in the collection Radicalized Four Tales of Our Present Moment. The whole collection reads like a season of Black Mirror.
The CoDominion stories by Pournelle and Niven.
Parable of the Sower shook me. I’ll read Parable of the Talents soon.
You might like The Everlasting by Alix Harrow! It’s marketed as a time travel fantasy novel, but the characters are caught in a time loop that gets progressively more dystopian as the story progresses. And it very much deals with all of the elements you listed above, especially how propaganda can be used to shape a nation’s identity.
The writing was beautiful, and the dystopian elements felt very grounded and realistic to me.
The Forth Realm Trilogy by John Twelve Hawks. Some fantasy/sci fi elements but overall the dystopian part is believable.
Walkaways
The Handmaid’s Tale, obvi, if you haven’t read it yet.
The School for Good Mothers
The Fifth Sacred Thing, and the sequel
Moon of the Crusted Snow
The Hunger Games
Chain Gang All Stars
And if you haven’t seen the film, One Battle After Another, you totally should. It does a good job of portraying an armed resistance movement in the near future USA.
The Deluge. It’s a near future world dealing with the increasing problems of global warming.
The Book Of The Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Elison, and the two books that come after it.
Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai. It’s based in Hungary at a collective farm at the point that communism is failing.
Very much feels real and an allegory to current times.
A couple I don’t see mentioned yet:
Hum by Helen Phillips … so depressing but beautiful written and enjoyable, felt very real near future AI dystopian.
Postmortal by Drew Magary … a cure for aging comes out and it doesn’t go well. A little more “out there” but the dystopia hit hard for me on that one.
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, brilliant.
Feed by M.T Anderson