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- A Clockwork Orange
series4 books1962
completed
similar bydarkdystopiascience fictionbig citytotalitarianismnear futurechallenging
Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel is narrated by Alex, a teenage gang leader in a near-future Britain gripped by a youth subculture of extreme violence, recounting his crimes in Nadsat, an invented slang blending English with Russian-derived words. After his crimes catch up with him, Alex is made the subject of a controversial state program meant to forcibly reform his behavior, and the novel uses his ordeal to question whether imposed goodness is worth the loss of free will. It is a standalone novel.
- Stand on Zanzibar
John Brunnerstandalone novel1968
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Stand on Zanzibar is a dystopian New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first in part published in New Worlds magazine in 1967 and in book form in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969 BSFA Award and the 1973 Prix Tour-Apollo Award.
- The Jagged Orbit
John Brunnerstandalone novel1969
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The Jagged Orbit is a science fiction novel by British writer John Brunner. It is similar to his earlier novel Stand on Zanzibar in its narrative style and dystopic outlook. It has exactly 100 titled chapters, which vary from several pages to part of one word. It was first published in 1969 with cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon, in the Ace Science Fiction Specials line issued by Ace Books.
- Space Merchants
series2 books1953
completed
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The Space Merchants (1953) is a satirical science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth that follows an advertising executive navigating a future where aggressive consumer capitalism has swallowed politics and daily life. The authors reunited three decades later for a direct sequel, The Merchants' War (1984), returning to the same satirical world. Together the two books form a compact bookend pair rather than an ongoing series.
- Make Room! Make Room!
Harry Harrisonstandalone novel1966
similar bydarkscience fictiondystopiabig citynear futureclass conflict
Make Room! Make Room! is a 1966 science fiction novel written by Harry Harrison exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority. It was originally serialized in Impulse magazine.
- The Sheep Look Up
John Brunnerstandalone novel1972
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The Sheep Look Up is a 1972 dystopian science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, dealing with the deterioration of the environment in the United States. It was nominated for the 1972 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
- Brave New World
series8 books1932
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Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel imagines a future World State where reproduction, social caste, and desire are all engineered before birth, and the population is kept content through conditioning, sleep-hypnosis, and a mood-altering drug called soma. The story follows the disruption this seemingly stable order suffers when an outsider raised beyond its reach is brought into it, exposing what the society traded away for comfort and order. Some editions pair the novel with Huxley's own 1958 nonfiction essay collection, Brave New World Revisited, which reassesses the book's ideas rather than continuing its story.
- The Shockwave Rider
John Brunnerstandalone novel1975
similar bydarkscience fictionbig citynear futuretotalitarianismdystopia
The Shockwave Rider is a science fiction novel by John Brunner, originally published in 1975. It is notable for its hero's use of computer hacking skills to escape pursuit in a dystopian future, and for the coining of the word "worm" to describe a program that propagates itself through a computer network. It also introduces the concept of a Delphi pool, perhaps derived from the RAND Corporation's Delphi method – a prediction market on world events which bears close resemblance to DARPA's controversial and cancelled Policy Analysis Market.
- Player Piano
Kurt Vonnegut & Jr.standalone novel1952
similar bydarkclass conflictscience fictiondystopianear future
In the near future, when cybernetic automation has effectively separated people into two castes, the "engineers and managers", and the remainder of the population who can find work only in "recycling and reclamation" or the largely useless military, an underground movement arises with the intention of rolling back those changes and giving the masses the dignity of owning their own, productive, work once more.
- Resurrection, Inc.
Kevin J. Andersonstandalone novel1988
similar bydarkscience fictionbig citynear futurerobotsclass conflictdystopia
It is the future--and the dead walk the streets, resurrected by technology to become servants to the living. Resurrection, Inc. found a profitable way to do it: a microprocessor brain, a synthetic heart, artificial blood--and anyone with money could buy a Servant with no mind of its own, trained to obey any command. But for every Servant created a living worker was out of a job, and suddenly the profits of Resurrection, Inc. became everyone else's loss. Some take to rioting in the streets, their rampages ruthlessly ended by heavily armed Enforcers, eager for the kill. Others join the ever-growing cult of Neo-Satanism, seeking Heaven in the depths of Hell. Only one man tries to save the world. His name is Danal, and he is the last hope of the living. He is dead, but he remembers everything.
- Moxyland
Lauren Beukesstandalone novel2008
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Moxyland is a cyberpunk dystopian novel written by South African author, Lauren Beukes. The book was published in 2008.
- Blade Runner Universe
series6 books1968
similar bydarkscience fictionnear futurebig cityrobots
Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard as he tracks escaped androids through an irradiated, near-abandoned San Francisco, using the hunt to probe questions of empathy and what separates human from machine. The novel became the basis for Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, and Marvel Comics later published an illustrated adaptation of that film. Together the two trace the story's path from prose original to screen and comic-page adaptation.
- The Running Man
Stephen Kingstandalone novel1982
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The Running Man is a dystopian thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the omnibus The Bachman Books. The novel is set in a dystopian United States during the year 2025, in which the nation's economy is in ruins and world violence is rising. The story follows protagonist Ben Richards as he participates in the reality show The Running Man, in which contestants win money by evading a team of hitmen sent to kill them.
- The Handmaid's Tale
series3 books1985
similar bydarkdystopiascience fictionnear futuretotalitarianism
The Handmaid's Tale is Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel set in Gilead, a totalitarian theocracy that has overthrown the United States and forces fertile women into reproductive servitude as Handmaids; it is narrated by one such woman, Offred. Atwood returned to the world in her 2019 sequel The Testaments, set fifteen years later and narrated by three women, including the regime's Aunt Lydia. Together the two novels move from Gilead's grip on power toward the first cracks in it.
- The Wanting Seed
Anthony Burgessstandalone novel1962
similar bydarkscience fictiondystopianear futuretotalitarianismchallenging
The Wanting Seed is a dystopian novel by the English author Anthony Burgess, written in 1962.
- On Wings of Song
Thomas M. Dischstandalone novel1979
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On Wings of Song is a 1979 science fiction novel by American writer Thomas M. Disch. It was first published as a serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in three installments in February to April 1979. Like Disch's previous novel 334, it is a bitter satire that depicts a near-future America falling into worsening economic and social crisis. It was critically well received and is often considered Disch's best work. It was, however, a commercial failure.
- High-Rise
J. G. Ballardstandalone novel1975
similar bydarkbig citynear futureclass conflictdystopiascience fiction
High-Rise is a 1975 novel by British writer J. G. Ballard. The story describes the disintegration of a luxury high-rise building as its affluent residents gradually descend into violent chaos. As with Ballard's previous novels Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974), High-Rise inquires into the ways in which modern social and technological landscapes could alter the human psyche in provocative and hitherto unexplored ways. It was adapted into a film of the same name, in 2015, by director Ben Wheatley.
- The Circle (Eggers)
series2 books2013
similar bydarkdystopianear futuretotalitarianismscience fictionbig city
Mae Holland lands a coveted job at the Circle, a Silicon Valley tech company whose relentless, cheerful push toward total transparency -- 'secrets are lies, sharing is caring, privacy is theft' -- gradually reveals itself as something closer to soft totalitarianism. Dave Eggers's The Circle follows Mae's rise inside the company as she buys further and further into its ideology, at increasing cost to her own privacy and the people around her. The 2021 follow-up, The Every, picks up with Mae now running the merged tech giant and a new employee questioning it from the inside.
- Fahrenheit 451
series2 books1951
completed
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Fahrenheit 451 began life as "The Fireman," a novella Ray Bradbury published in 1951, which he then expanded into the full novel released in 1953 under its now-famous title. Set in a future where books are outlawed and firemen exist to burn them, it follows fireman Guy Montag as doubts about his job push him toward the very literature he's supposed to destroy. The novella and novel are one story's evolution rather than two separate books.
- Earthseed
series7 books1993
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Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed novels, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, follow Lauren Olamina as she survives the collapse of a climate-ravaged, near-future United States and founds a belief system built on the idea that "God is Change." The two-book series was left unfinished at Butler's death; a planned third novel, Parable of the Trickster, was never completed. Later graphic-novel adaptations retell the same two stories rather than continuing the narrative.
- Brute Orbits
George Zebrowskistandalone novel1998
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From the flaps of the HarperPrism first edition: "It is the twenty-first century. Suffering from global warming and overpopulation, Earth is opening the solar system to industrialization. One of the largest growth industries - "corrections" - capitalizes on the opportunity, sending convicts to mine asteroids diverted into near-Earth orbits. Like the condemned digging their own graves, the convicts hollow out their own prisons, as the mined-out shells become deep-space cell blocks. Then an administrative genius realizes that the asteroid prisons can be inserted into solar orbits, timed to return to near-Earth space when terms run out. This not only adds further security, it removes the problem of abuse by guards, since they are no longer needed. The orbits grow longer, tending to run out the inmates lives in the vast swing beyond the solar system and back. Ambitious administrators soon discover that small "errors" in boost velocity can rid them of selected groups altogether, whether sentenced to life or not. Political prisoners can be easily included in these planned mistakes, along with the hopelessly violent and mentally defective: the mix of felons - both male and female - makes few distinctions. In time the abyss in every direction from Earth is dotted with receding prisons. Human rejects endure the black vise of interstellar space-time - soft bodies in hard shells, surviving along open orbits, free to live and reproduce as they wish, to seek what law they can amongst themselves, never to return... But as Earths societies recover and prosper, attitudes toward crime and punishment change. The sky's constant reproach spurs a sense of sympathy - and curiosity - about what has happened in these "brute orbits." When an advanced propulsion system makes it possible to overtake the scattered habitats, a courageous team of social scientists sets out to go where no free human has gone before. What they discover about this lost humanity is both provocative and moving. Zebrowski's latest work is an innovative novel about the future of crime and punishment, in which conflicted hearts and minds find new ways to war over the great prize of history called justice."
- New York 2140
Kim Stanley Robinsonstandalone novel2017
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New York 2140 is a 2017 climate fiction novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The novel is set in a New York City that has been flooded and altered by rising water.
