Dystopian books with parallels to today

As more and more scandals leak out of our government, as the war drags on, as the rampant corruption becomes numbing, I find myself wanting to read some worst-case-scenario books. It's amazing how most of these have parallels with today's administration.

Last year, I read in succession 1984 by George Orwell, We (Penguin Classics) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley because I was in the mood for some dystopian literature.

Now, I've just finished Orwell's Animal Farm and I'm currently reading Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. On the TBR pile are Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Can anyone think of some other books which would fit into this theme?

Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing (which I read many years ago and don't remember a lot of details!) has as one of its major themes the control of water rights. This is going to be (and already is for some) a huge issue for many cities/countries in the coming years.

TwoDs - maybe you should consider throwing in something light in between your marathon dystopian readings! I'm afraid I'd be ready to slash my wrists if I'd read that much foreboding literature all at once!

I am not certain these can be marked as "dystopian", but along some of the same themes...

...another bleak outing is a book that moved me to tears, Saramago's Blindness. It always came across to me as an allegory of what would happen if the powerful few had to take just one step backwards.

A more advensuresome and lighter tale is Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson. This was the first novel of his that I read, and I liked the setup of a country with borders within...similar to The Man in the High Castle.

And yes, everyone must read lighter fare on a regualr basis - it is what keeps some of us sane in this world!

I'll second Blindness ... also, if you want to kind of stay on topic, yet still kind of lighten up, you could check out Jennifer Government by Max Barry and The Space Merchants by Pohl/Kornbluth ...

KromesTomes: I loved Jennifer Government, great, fast-paced, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, dystopian read.

Don't worry about my sanity or any thoughts of wrist-slashing, I do mix in light reading here and there. It's just that I am somewhat of a political junkie (avid reader of DailyKos) so I like to read fiction that's on-topic and relevant to today's political discourse.

If you want a real worst-case scenario, check out A Planet for the President, about an advisor to a US president who is a climate change skeptic.

On the same topic, but more serious, is Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy, Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and Counting.

The Children's War is a "What if the Nazis won World War II" book. I don't think I'm imagining that the author is at times subtly commenting on some present day issues.

Thought of a couple more ...

Lights out in the reptile house by Jim Shepard

Waiting for the barbarians by J.M. Coetzee ... although, of course, originally aimed at South Africa

The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner Explores the concept of living in as environmental wasteland. As an added bonus, 30 years ago Brunner accurately predicted how we would use and interact with computers today. Brunner's other book Stand on Zanzibar deals more with overpopulation and treatment of people in the "developing" world.

TheTwoD’s: have to disagree with you on Jennifer Government. While the ideas behind it were good the writing itself was extremely uncompelling and the corporations end the same place they started, on top! Oh and the plot “twists” could be seen coming a mile away.

Random side note: I wrote my senior thesis on Eugenics in Feminist Utopian and Dystopian Societies and there are some really, really badly written books in the Utop/Dystop genre.

I Second the Kim Stanley Robinson books, I just finished The Gold Coast: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) which I thought wast really fantastic although all three books in the trilogy are various degrees of utopia/Dystopia. I thought this one was sadly the most likely and really great writting.

I also love Red Mars and the rest of that trilogy things get really horrible on Earth but there is hope on Mars. This series has so many wonderful ideas about politics and ecology and I just feel like if everyone read it...

prophetandmistress: I wasn't proclaiming Jennifer Government as dystopian classic. I found it fun and light compared to something like 1984, in which, incidentally, the government of Oceania winds up in the same place it started while Winston winds up worse off.

I think of Jennifer Government as escapist dystopian satire. :)

Re: Kim Stanley Robinson

The only book I have of his is The Memory of Whiteness, which I have not yet read. I've been wanting to read his three trilogies (Mars, Three Californias and global warming) so this gives me added incentive. Thanks!

I have a book called After all, this is England by Robert Muller. It was written in 1965 and the story concerns Britain's gradual descent into fascism as a response to immigration and terrorism. I found it scarily plausible - particularly the way the population and the mainstream politicians accept the gradual restrictions on their liberty: - it's necessary to fight crime/terrorism . . . most people seem to support these measures . . . there's not much we can do to oppose them . . . it's just ridiculous to say that England could become a dictatorship!

There is very good ideas about the subject in On Nineteen Eighty-Four. I quote from the Introduction (p. 7):

"... although Nineteen Eighty-Four was created to dramatize the threat of the Soviet Union, it contains the germs of a powerful critique of U.S. practice. ... propaganda is in fact a more important means of social control in the United States than it is in a closed society like the former Soviet Union. In the United States, the elite does allow controversy, but only within limited bounds. The notion of the United States committing aggression, for instance, is "outside the pale of comprehensible thought." Freedom generally means "freedom of markets" in the American realm of Marketspeak, rather than political freedom. Just as individuais become "unpeople" in Ingsoc, entire populations disappear from the pages of mainstream American media in wartime; unlike American casualties, they have no political cost, and thus large-scale killing of them is permitted."

Michael Frayn's A Very Private Life is a newish novel, British author - and it spoke so loudly of one of the truisms of public life, especially in the UK today.

(quoting from my brief review on LT:)
Frayn has taken a simple idea and made it all-too-real and frighteningly possible. His society has developed as a result of increasing governmental control over hard-to-control society (sounds familiar?). People feared Big Brother, and their total loss of freedom. "But what in fact happened was exactly the opposite. Everything became private. People recognised the corruption of indiscriminate human contact. Whoever could afford it built a wall around himself and his family to keep out society and its demands." Scary stuff.

Oh, and everyone who suggested Saramago's Blindness - yes yes yes. Wonderful.

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanislaw Lem
Truly hilarious satire written in the 1960s about a future so bad everyone is prescribed drugs in order to bear it.

Hey wait a minute...That sound like life today.

But seriously, it's a lot of fun and a very quick read.

CBaker

Don't forget "Rhinoceros" -- the play by Eugene Ionesco where the humans turn into stampeding rhinos at an exponential rate. Ionesco, for whom the entire Universe was a dystopia, was retelling the horror of the days when his native Romania went fascist and pro-Nazi. It's a bestiary (cf. "Animal Farm")and an allegory -- but no less powerful than more literal settings.

There are also Erewhon and Return to Erewhon. Not usre if they are Dsytopic but they are certainly interesting reads.

Another Margaret Atwood dystopian future is Oryx and Crake. And there's always V for Vendetta by Alan Moore.

#18: I've got Oryx and Crake on my TBR pile. I've seen the film of V for Vendetta but have not read the graphic novel yet.

Not dystopian per se, more alternative history that we are glad didn't happen is Fatherland by Robert Harris.
On my to-be-bought pile that might fit your bill is The Pesthouseby Jim Crace. If his previous work is anything to go by, this should be a good book. Also not bought yet but will be is The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Prophetandmistress - I can well imagine you had to read through a lot of dross for your thesis! But the main premise sounds pretty interesting.

PressShift1 (! great handle btw): I've started Oryx and Crake twice and haven't been able to get more than 40 or 50 page in. I've heard it's excellent - do I just need to stick with it?

teelgee -- I don't remember how long it took me to get sucked in, but it is worth the effort.

The scariest dystopian novel I've read is Margaret Atwood's HANDMAID'S TALE. It still resonates today and is especially prescient in light of what is happening with the republican party.

Against Nature is a contemporary dystopia for the post 9/11 landscape.
I used the sins of the recent past (secret prisons, torture, extraordinary rendition, suspending habeas corpus, ignoring the Geneva Convention, domestic spying, Abu Ghraib, GITMO, invasions of sovereign nations, and a host of other misdeeds.) to create a contemporary dystopia.
The catalyst is a global pandemic and the Social Darwinists are in power.

With Bush ever present in our rearview mirror and social Darwinist Tea Partiers on the horizon, Against Nature is a dystopia for our time.

Inspired by Orwell and Sinclair Lewis's It can't Happen Here.

John Nelson

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis