What Is Dystopian Fiction? 20 Examples of Dystopian Fiction

Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that offers a vision of the future. Dystopias are societies in cataclysmic decline, with characters who battle environmental ruin, technological control, and government oppression. Dystopian novels with a didactic message often explore themes like anarchism, oppression, and mass poverty.

Margaret Atwood, one of literature’s most celebrated authors of dystopian fiction, sees the genre as a way into the future. “If you’re interested in writing speculative fiction, one way to generate a plot is to take an idea from current society and move it a little further down the road,” says Margaret. “Even if humans are short-term thinkers, fiction can anticipate and extrapolate into multiple versions of the future.”

A dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. A dystopia is an antonym of a utopia, which is a perfect society. The term “utopia” was coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book Utopia, which was about an ideal society on a fictional island. Dystopian literature, which began as a response to utopian literature, explores the dangerous effects of political and social structures on humanity’s future.

Dystopian novels can challenge readers to think differently about current social and political climates and, in some instances, even inspire action. Consider why dystopian fiction is significant in literature:

• Critique: Dystopian novels can be satirical critiques. For example, the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a social satire of behaviorism. It occurs in a futuristic society with a youth subculture of extreme violence. A totalitarian government protects the dystopian society by prescribing good behavior and abolishing violent impulses. Another example is George Orwell’s allegorical Animal Farm, about a group of pigs who stage a rebellion against their human farmer. The Russian Revolution was the basis for the farm animals’ rise to power.
• Educate: Dystopian fiction can be a way to educate and warn humanity about the dangers of current social and political structures. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 bestseller The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a futuristic United States known as Gilead. It cautions against oppressive patriarchy.
• Opine: Dystopian stories may convey an author’s beliefs. For example, H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine reflected Wells’ socialist views. The story follows a Victorian England scientist who builds a time machine and witnesses the pitfalls of a capitalist society.

The central themes of dystopian novels generally fall under these five categories:

1. 1. Environmental destruction: Dystopian novels often occur in inhabitable places on Earth or settings preparing for collapse. Climate dystopia is a subcategory of dystopian fiction that explores the effects of climate change and global warming.
2. 2. Government control: Government plays a significant role in dystopian literature. Generally, there is either no government or an oppressive ruling body.
3. 3. Loss of individualism: Many dystopian futures depict the dangers of conformity and explore how the needs of society as a whole compare to individual needs.
4. 4. Survival: The oppressive powers and destruction in dystopian worlds often leave the inhabitants to fend for themselves.
5. 5. Technological control: Advanced science and technology in dystopian works go beyond tools for improving everyday life—technology is often depicted as a controlling, omnipresent force and is often a fear-mongering tactic.

Some of the best dystopian novel examples include:

1. 1. 1984: In George Orwell’s 1984, the world is under complete government control. The fictional dictator Big Brother enforces omnipresent surveillance over the people living in the three inter-continental superstates remaining after a world war.
2. 2. Always Coming Home: Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin is a 1985 science-fiction novel that follows the Kesh community of people in a post-apocalyptic world. The Kesh repudiate a government system and are self-organized.
3. 3. American War: A Novel: Omar El Akkad’s 2017 dystopian novel takes place in 2074 in an America experiencing a second civil war. The story follows Sarat, whose family goes to a camp for displaced persons after her father dies.
4. 4. Brave New World: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, written in 1932, explores the danger of technology. The ruling World State uses powerful conditioning technologies to control reproduction and citizens’ actions.
5. 5. Divergent: Victoria Roth’s young adult series takes place in post-apocalyptic Chicago, where people are part of factions and have no independence. The series includes Divergent (2011), Insurgent (2012), Allegiant (2013), and Four: A Divergent Collection (2014).
6. 6. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: This novel, by Philip K. Dick, takes place in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco after a global nuclear war in 1992. This 1968 novel, the basis for the film The Blade Runner, explores the dangers of advanced technology. There are android robots indistinguishable from humans, and mass extinction has led to artificial animals.
7. 7. Fahrenheit 451: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, written in 1953, follows a fireman whose job is to burn books. Because of the censorship of books, this future society has increased interest in technology and entertainment—and an inability to think freely and creatively.
8. 8. Feed: Feed by M.T. Anderson is a young adult dystopian novel written in 2002 about a near-future America controlled by Feednet, a computer network implanted into the brains of seventy-three percent of American citizens.
9. 9. Lord of the Flies: Lord of the Flies by William Golding, written in 1954, is about a group of schoolboys abandoned on a tropical island after their plane gets shot down during a fictional atomic war. Conflicts emerge between the boys as they struggle to build a civilization and fight for survival.
10. 10. Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 dystopian sci-fi novel is about students at Hailsham, an English boarding school. When two students escape the confines of the school and venture into the real world, they discover the school is a state-sanctioned facility developing clones.
11. 11. Player Piano: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s first novel, Player Piano (1952), follows an engineer trying to navigate life in a dystopia where a supercomputer dominates the world.
12. 12. The Hunger Games: The Hunger Games, a young adult trilogy by Suzanne Collins, takes place in the fictional world of Panem, a future nation on the ruins of North America. Panem’s totalitarian government, The Capitol, holds most of the country’s wealth and controls the citizens. Each year, children from Panem’s twelve districts are selected to participate in a televised death match called the Hunger Games.
13. 13. The City of Ember: Jeanne DuPrau’s novel takes place in an underground world called Ember, built to thwart an impending disaster, and follows a group of teenagers working to find their way out.
14. 14. The Giver: Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a 1993 novel about a society without pain after the community converts to “Sameness.” The story follows Jonas, a 12-year-old boy selected to be the society’s Receiver of Memory and will store the community's memories from before the enactment of “Sameness.”
15. 15. The Maze Runner: This series by James Dashner chronicles the events of the destruction of the dystopian world by massive solar flares and coronal mass ejection. In the first book of the series, a group of teenage boys are stuck in an imaginary place called The Glade and have to find their way out of its ever-changing maze.
16. 16. The Resisters: Gish Jen’s 2020 novel The Resisters takes place in AutoAmerica, a dystopian version of the United States. It follows a family struggling to navigate the apartheid-like society.
17. 17. The Road: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, written in 2006, is a post-apocalyptic story about a father and son venturing across the ruins of America after an extinction event.
18. 18. The Running Man: The Running Man was written by Stephen King and first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982. The novel is about an impoverished man living under an oppressive government who competes in a life-threatening game show to earn money to care for his family in 2025.
19. 19. To Paradise: Hanya Yanagihara’s 2022 novel To Paradise contains three stories, spanning New York to an alternate United States, from 1893 to 2094.
20. 20. We: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, written in 1920, follows a spacecraft engineer living in the future nation, One State. The citizens of One State wear uniforms and are referred to by number.

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