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Dystopic Novels?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-those-who-dislike-happy-endings dept.

paulumz asks: "I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding novels about distopias. Or any novels with a good depressing ending with no hope of a future. I'm well aware of 1984, Brave New World, and Handmaid's Tale, I'm looking for lesser known ones. Know of any good ones?"

3 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. more by Snafoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    A quasi-dystopia (and very, very good reading):

    _Infinite_Jest_, by David Foster Wallace.

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    - undoware.ca
  2. Nabokov by esme · · Score: 3, Informative
    Other people have mentioned a lot these authors, but here are my favorites:
    • Zamiatin: We - probably the first dystopic novel
    • Kakfa: The Trial - Much better then Metamorphosis, IMHO. Though the end is a bit sudden.
    • Nabokov: Bend Sinister - the best dystopia, and the most realistic. Almost all early Nabokov has dystopic elements. Invitation to a Beheading is another great dystopia by VN, too.
    • Wells: Time Machine - one of the great classics.
    • Vonnegut: Galapagos - Vonnegut's got a lot of dystopic themes running through his work, but this is my favorite. Close runners up would be Slaughterhouse-5 and Cat's Cradle.
    • Heller: Catch-22 - another looks at WW2 as a dystopia. Worth reading just for the concepts of jamais-vu and presque-vu. One of the funniest books around, too.

    -Esme

  3. I know this book has been mentioned before by Treeluvinhippy · · Score: 3, Informative

    However "We" probably has the most depressing ending I have ever read. IMHO I would rather do the starving rat in a cage straped to your face thing from "1984" then what D-503 went through at the end of that novel.

    The book has a history in the real world. The author Yevgeny Zamyatin was a supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1905 and actually served some time in prison. (Historical note this was a different uprising then the more famous 1917 revolt that lead to the Soviet Union.)

    As time passed he became disillusioned and wrote "WE" as an anti-communist story. Throughout the twenties Zamyatin was hounded by his peers for not playing follow the literary leader (not writing propaganda). Zamyatin was allowed much to his surprise to leave Russia in 1931 and settled in Paris. Untill his death in '37 he remained an outspoken critic of the Soviet System.

    "We" has the advantage of being written with the perspective of someone who actualy helped in a small way bring about, lived during the founding of and later renounce a real world negative utopia.

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