I’m nearly finished rereading 1984 and my appetite for dystopian books is whetted. What are some other great ones I should check out?
I have not quite finished the book yet, but Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future is hard-science fiction set in the near future when climate change tipping points start to be reached, and it is so far my favorite book in a long time. It is dystopian, but not bleak or hopeless.
I’d argue this book is a little too hopeful. So many of the solutions to climate change involved every rival economic superpower giving up some of their control to make things better for humanity (e.g. world banks backing a digital currency that rewards removing or preventing the release of carbon from the atmosphere, displacing people from their land to create an unbroken wilderness across the globe, etc.).
I recommend Feed by M.T. Anderson if you wanna see a hopeless dystopia. Schools are run by corporations, young people are apathetic and kept ignorant since they’d rather enjoy a virtual world via brain implants, the oceans are pretty much dead, and the world is on the brink of nuclear war.