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Recommendations please - dystopian fiction

65 replies

MoorGirl · 11/04/2022 21:19

Any ideas?
I have previously really enjoyed:

Battle Royale
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy
Children of Time
The Hunger Games series

Thanks!

OP posts:
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PritiPatelsMaker · 25/06/2022 07:12

Exactly @TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross. Such scary times.

After recommending the Midwich Cuckoos I've just realised it's on the Kindle Deals for £1.99.

TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross · 25/06/2022 07:09

I wish the latest Supreme Court decision was dystopian fiction…

someone needs to tell the USA that The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t a How To manual.

PritiPatelsMaker · 25/06/2022 07:05

Another vote for The Girl with All the Gifts and 1984.

You might also like The Midwich Cuckoos. John Wyndham is usually a very easy read but with great storylines and Sky is about to show a dramatisation.

cooliebrown · 17/06/2022 10:05

Woman On The Edge of Time by Marge Piercy - both dystopian and utopian, with 1970s USA as the tipping point which might go either way

Belovedfool · 09/06/2022 20:32

StickyFingeredWeeNed · 09/06/2022 20:05

@Belovedfool the boy on the bridge is the sequel - excellent! We meet Melanie grown-up!

Oh, I'm going to have to read that, but I kind of don't want to lol! Thanks, I think....

StickyFingeredWeeNed · 09/06/2022 20:05

@Belovedfool the boy on the bridge is the sequel - excellent! We meet Melanie grown-up!

mizu · 05/06/2022 15:51

Crikey I remember reading Z for Zachariah on the school bus and weeping my heart out!

DisplayPurposesOnly · 04/06/2022 22:42

Z For Zachariah

Belovedfool · 04/06/2022 22:36

The girl with all the gifts. Really freaked me out.

InvincibleInvisibility · 31/05/2022 21:27

I loved the Justin Cronin books mentioned by PP

Also William Fortschen books: one second after and one year after - they're based on what could happen after an EMP bomb wipes out electronics in America.

ladyinthecampervan · 31/05/2022 21:22

Make Room, Make Room

PhilibusterVigilantly · 31/05/2022 21:13

The Wall - John Lanchester
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

WalkerWalking · 31/05/2022 19:58

Anything by John Wyndham, especially the crysallids, but also day of the triffids and the midwich cuckoos (although possibly these are more post apocalyptic, or post world-altering-event, than dystopian?)

Vox by Christina something (not the best tbh, the ending is shit, but the premise is very disturbing)

I'm going to be following up this thread- I love a bit of terrifyingly close to the truth dystopia.

usernamenotaccepted · 31/05/2022 19:51

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist.

pointythings · 31/05/2022 19:44

Seconding Sheri Tepper, particularly the Grass trilogy. You could also go waaaay back and read Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers and if you want beautiful vintage alternate reality I recommend Pavane by Keith Roberts,

mizu · 29/05/2022 15:26

Yes to the Wool trilogy - fabulous. My DD17 has recently read too and really enjoyed.

American War was great too - and The Wall.

If you haven't read The Handmaid's Tale, then read!

Also, the Last by Hanna Jameson

And i am reading Kings of a Dead World but Jamie Mollart at the moment.

MsAmerica · 13/05/2022 03:32

I've become interested in this:

He Envisioned a Nightmarish, Dystopian Russia. Now He Fears Living in One.
By Alexandra Alter

Sorokin is widely regarded as one of Russia’s most inventive writers, an iconoclast who has chronicled the country’s slide toward authoritarianism, with subversive fables that satirize bleak chapters of Soviet history, and futuristic tales that capture the creeping repression of 21st-century Russia. But despite his reputation as both a gifted postmodern stylist and an unrepentant troublemaker, he remains relatively unknown in the West. Until recently, just a handful of his works had been published in English, in part because his writing can be so challenging to translate, and so hard to stomach. Now, four decades into his scandal-scorched career, publishers are preparing to release eight new English-language translations of his books.

www.yahoo.com/news/envisioned-nightmarish-dystopian-russia-now-141504513.html

Snowraingain · 12/05/2022 15:54

Sorry posted too soon - it’s nothing really at all like the film.

Snowraingain · 12/05/2022 15:48

World War z by Max Brooks is outstanding.

KimikosNightmare · 11/05/2022 22:06

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain Trilogy - The Strain, The Fall and The Night Eternal.

Adam Baker - Outpost,Juggernaut, Terminus and Impact.

FieryPitOfMordor · 11/05/2022 22:01

Vox - Christina Dalcher
The End of Men - Christina Sweeney-Baird

Etinoxaurus · 11/05/2022 21:59

The Girl with all the Gifts
Not so much distopian but speculative near future- God of Strange New Things.

SammyScrounge · 11/05/2022 21:57

1984

KimikosNightmare · 11/05/2022 21:55

Justin Cronin's Passage Trilogy - The Passage, The Twelve and The City of Mirrors

Speculative rather than dystopian , (although it becomes dystopian in its own universe) Chris Beckett's wonderful Eden trilogy - Dark Eden, Mother of Eden and Daughter of Eden.

BarryKentPoet · 19/04/2022 15:59

A really bizarre one I read recently was Before and After by Andrew Shanahan about a morbidly obese man who is stuck in his flat when the world ends.