Best dystopian books

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I've read Fatherland, 1984, The Stand, Handmaid's Tale, etc. Am looking for recommendations along those lines .. plague, aliens and the like

What's the best dystopian book you've read?

Absolute favourites are;
The stand ( but I see you've read it)
World war Z its nothing like the film, it's a great book!

Other ones I've enjoyed are:
The girl with all the gifts
The Road
End of the world Running Club
Swan song
Never let me go

Really struggled with Onyx and Crake but persevered to the end

Gave up halfway through Blind Faith by Ben Elton it's rubbish, definitely don't bother with that one!

Oryx and crake , and the two after
Amazing books

And the Bone Clocks
Also loved

I listened to book of strange new things on radio 4 - it’s in the sounds app. Strange book!

World war z / great book, terrible film. Would be a perfect Netflix series though .

Vox by Christina Dalcher
Q (by the same author)
The Choice by Claire Wade

Reading these books in the current times is very interesting...

I read Children of the Dust aged 11 and it gave me nightmares for about 15 years afterwards. I can't even think about it now.

I also love Station 11 and The Chrysalids, probably my two favourite dystopian books, and Never Let Me Go. Also Girlfriend in a Coma, although the dystopian aspect doesn't become apparent until quite far in.

In The Choice, cake is banned and exercise is mandatory and enforced. Sounds familiar...

Rule Britannia by Daphne Du Maurier is another good one. Written in the 1970s about a Britain that has left Europe and formed an alliance with the USA (although USA hold the power).

Far fetched, I know

I've recently stared reading old science fiction. A short story by Asimov written in 1956 that was set in 2020 was fun and nt troubling. It made me want to read the oldies but goodies, 1984, farenheit what'sit, etc.. After a brief google I found what's thought to be the first science fiction book ever written, The Blazing World, by Margaret Cavendish (1666). A woman light years ahead of her time. I can't wait to read it.

The Aadam series by Margaret attwood.
The power.. Though got a bit silly in the end

Cox and Q by same author

The wall
The ship
Red clocks
The farm

And a fantastic book set in nordic country can't remember the name but everyone over 50 with no dependents and single has to retire to a luxury facility were they slowly take part in medical experiments... Someone I think will know its title!

The Dust, wool, shift trilogy

And the trilogy about the virus from bats.. Can't recall the title of the first two but last is city of mirrors...

Sorry.. Typo.. Vox

Also seen up thread the last two I suggest are the passage trilogy.

And "gather the daughters" i read recently was very very good

The Passage, The Twelve and City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin. I have them all and plan to read them again when I've finished The Warehouse and Skin.

Brave New World - Huxley
We - Zamyatin

Still undecided whether my favourite is Brave New World or 1984.

Philip Roth - The Plot Against America
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker (possibly my favourite book ever)
Sinclair Lewis - It Can’t Happen Here

I really liked Louise Welch's Plague Times trilogy - the first one is called A Lovely Way to Burn. PD James's Children of Men is great - absolutely chilling. You have probably read Naomi Alderson's The Power, but if you haven't, you should!

If you can find it, the BBC radio adaptation of Tony Burgess's Pontypool Changes Everything is awesome - it's a zombie apocalypse drama about a radio host. I haven't read the book but I was gripped by the radio play. It's quite far down the horror end of the scale.

Nevil Shute's On the Beach is properly bleak and beautiful, although not quite dystopian - going slightly off track remembering things that I've listened to on the radio rather than read. It's gorgeous end-of-the-world stuff.

If I loved Oryx and Crake,
Quite liked Station 11 and The Passage trilogy
Was bored to tears by the Wool trilogy (but still finished them....)
What else would you all recommend me??
For the pp who recommended Seveneaves, I'm actually struggling through it at the moment....
I know it's "hard scifi" but I need more character development and humanity. Does it continue with the detailed technical descriptions of the Space station?? Or does the plot ever kick in.....
I think you just can't beat Attwood for dystopia. I wanted to like Station 11 more, but actually felt it was too short, I wished she had given more details. Wool had the opposite problem. Up and down the stairs, up down up down....... 🤨

@Margotshypotheticaldog

Did you read the other books in the oryx and crake series..

You might like The Ship.. Sorry cannot recall the author
And Only Ever Yours

I did, The year of the flood wasn't it? Was there another one? Thanks for the recommendation, will look those up.

Yes there are three.
Laet called maddadam..

@margorshypotheticaldog, it sounds like we have very similar tastes - I felt exactly the same about the Wool trilogy, it seemed to take as long to read about going up and down the bloody stairs as it would have done to actually do the climbing. I felt there was a series which could have done with A Lot of editing.

The Handmaid's Tale. I'm a huge fan of Atwood anyway, but it's one of my favourites by her, and more chilling than most because it's plausible.

I also like Brave New World, Winterkill (a YA novel set in Canada, where the people live like Puritans) and The Hunger Games, and in terms of manga, I used to like Attack on Titan until it went down the toilet. 1984 gave me nightmares. Blind Faith by Ben Elton is pretty good, if a bit OTT.

Lordfrontpaw's list is excellent.

I've just finished a Japanese novel called ^The Memory Police* by Yoko Agawa. It was written in 1994 but has only recently been published in English and is on the shortlist for the international Booker this year. A very dreamlike dystopia.

The Passage Trilogy

I must have read it 3 times. I'm not sure why I love those books so much but something about them makes me read them over and over.

The Road

The 5th Wave series

The Passage by Justin Cronin

On The Beach by Neville Shuts

Domain by James Herbert

Last Light by Alex Scarrow (I think)

The Stand

I Am Legend

The Day of the Triffids

The Time Machine

The Handmaids Take

Hope these help!