Hi everyone, I'm a 25yo woman who enjoys sci-fi, weird, dystopian character-driven books. I guess that's the best way of describing it. I like books that ask what it means to be human and what humans owe to each other. Speculative biology and future etc.
I usually like books with female protagonists better, but I'm not opposed to male ones. I dont like romance or murder mysteries so much, but Im not against books that have those elements as long as its not the entire plot. Here's some of my favorites:
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Parable.of the Sower- Octavia Butler
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Parable of the Talents- Octavia Butler
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All Tomorrow's- Nemo Ramjet
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A Short Stay in Hell- Stephen L. Peck
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The Shattered Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, & The Stone Sky) by N.K. Jemison
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I Who Have Never Known Men- Jacqueline Harpman
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A Handmaid's Tale- Margaret Atwood
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Big Swiss- Jean Beagin
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A Sky Full of Elephants- Cebo Campbell
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Island of the Blue Dolphins- Scott O'Dell
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Dune- Frank Herbert
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The Word for World is Forrest- Usrula K Le Guin
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Kindred- Octavia Butler
Thanks for any recommendations!
by MarxistMountainGoat
8 Comments
I recommend Future Home of the Living God. Don’t let the title scare you off. Because you enjoyed Handmaid’s Tale and Parable, I think this is right up your alley. It is a devastating dystopia that really digs into gendered relationships and bodily autonomy when the world falls apart.
It can’t be a good sign that there’s at least 10 requests a day here for dystopian future readings!😢
Anyway, this is a “core” list of classics that I’ve used in teaching about apocalyptic and post apocalyptic fiction in print. It doesn’t have more modern stuff–the last 10 years. (That is another list.)
My favorite is John Christopher’s *NO BLADE OF GRASS*. (Also published as *THE DEATH OF GRASS*). Has that slow twist of everything falling apart, and people becoming more and more ruthless to survive. It was made, unfortunately, into a pretty poor movie. But you can see its influence on everything newer, especially on the character of Carol in *THE WALKING DEAD.*
Just to clarify. These are post-apocalyptic or “during apocalypse” societies that I think it would be utterly miserable to live in, so fits “dystopia” but many of them contain heroes who fight to improve the world!
*EARTH ABIDES*–George R. Stewart (1949) A plague wipes out much of humanity, leaving one man to see society fall apart, but then live pretty much at the Hunter-Gatherer level. It has a philosophical approach that many people have found to be attractive. The world is falling apart, but it still goes on, it abides whatever happens to humans.
*I AM LEGEND*–Richard Matheson (1954) The last man alive fights vampire-like mutants in a dead city–with a twist on the perspective of who is the *real* monster. [by the way I think it had a definite influence on the Apple series *PLURIBUS.*]
*THE LONG TOMORROW*–Leigh Brackett (1955) Generations after nuclear war, frontier America bans advanced technology.
*NO BLADE OF GRASS*–John Christopher (1956). A British family flees through violent chaos after a massive crop blight. As said, incredibly influential.
*ON THE BEACH*–Neville Shute (1957) Australians await the inevitable spread of radioactive fallout. Made twice into movies that I don’t think completely captured the pathos of “waiting for the end.”
*ALAS, BABYLON*–Pat Frank (1959) A Florida town tries to survive after nuclear war cuts it off from the world. Really like this one because it has that feel of ordinary people just trying to figure out how to make it in the world where everything seems to be falling apart more and more.
*A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ*–Walter M. Miller Jr. (1959) Monks preserve scraps of science after atomic war destroys civilization. Probably has some of the best notes of humor that you can have in a post apocalyptic world. As a historian, I’m enchanted by how the future misinterpret the past.
*THE DROWNED WORLD*–J.G. Ballard (1962). A flooded, overheated Earth drives survivors into dreams and regression. Doesn’t really have much of a plot, but it’s a great sort of slice of life.
*GREYBEARD*–Brian Aldiss (1964) Decades after radiation sterilizes humanity, the last elders wander a dying world.
*DAVY*–Edgar Pangborn (1964). This novel was sort of uneven, but really classifies as great literature, especially the first half; a very poignant story of a world after the collapse.
*THE CRYSTAL WORLD*–J.G. Ballard (1966). A jungle crystallizes as time and matter break down.
*SWAN SONG*–Robert McCammon (1987). Survivors of nuclear war fight both devastation and a rising evil. This is my least enthusiastic recommendation. I just felt it went on too much, but many people like it.
*THE LAST SHIP*–William Brinkley (1988) A U.S. Navy destroyer roams a dead world after global nuclear exchange. I honestly didn’t like the novel as much. I think it was trying too hard to be literary. The television adaptation had almost nothing to do with it plot-wise but was outstanding.
*THE ROAD*–Cormac McCarthy (2006) A father and son walk through burned America, trying to survive.
*WORLD MADE BY HAND* (2008) by James Howard Kunstler. I thought this one had great promise. It was a low-key post scarcity and collapse of industrial society, economic apocalypse world. There’s a lot good or ordinary life minutia. But ultimately, I didn’t feel there was enough plot to go on for the rest of the series.
BONUS: Some short stories! The first four SF horror, the last fantasy horror: The most devastating, heartrending, bleak, and *original* end-of-the-world stories ever. I have never forgotten them; just absolutely brilliant gems.
Get ready to be unsettled for life!😳
Del Rey, Lester. “The Keepers of the House.” In *Black Cat Weekly #4,* 316–331. Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 2021. [A 1956 masterpiece about “after apocalypse” when our furry companions on this planet wander in the solitude].
“A Desperate Calculus” by Gregory Branford in *Armageddons*, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. New York: Ace, 1999. [SF Viral/biohorror]
“A Message to the King of Brobdingnag” by Richard Cowper. *The Tithonian Factor and Other Stories.* London: Gollancz, 1984. [Enviromental SF Horror]
“The Screwfly Solution” by Racoona Sheldon — pen name for Dr. Alice Sheldon, who often wrote under the other pen name of “James Tiptree, Jr.”
*Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.* San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2004.
[Invasion/viral SF horror] [I believe this had an influence on *BUGONIA*]
“After the Last Elf is Dead” by Harry Turtledove. *Counting Up, Counting Down.* New York: Del Rey Books, 2002. [Fantasy horror, a terrifying take on *Lord of the Rings*]
One that is more out there that you might like based on science fiction and weird and female protagonists is This is How You Lose the Time War. It is impossible for me to describe, but it’s so moving and lyrical.
Gideon the Ninth is a love letter to the Gothic set in space
More Atwood,The Testaments maybe, Oryx and Crake or Station Eleven Emily St John Mandel
Oryx and Crake (Madaddam series) by Margaret Atwood
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Brave New World is an amazing dystopian classic.
“It envisions a future world where technology, conditioning, and a rigid caste system control every aspect of human life. The story is set in a futuristic World State, where citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy that is challenged by the protagonist, John the Savage.”
Characters are not too lovable imo, but plot is great! Themes of social control through medication, entertainment and pleasure, individuality is frowned upon and it has a clear warning about the overuse of tech.