Best Dystopia Books
Best Dystopia Books
#1Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 12:29am
Dystopia: a work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror; state in which the condition of life is extremely bad as from deprivation or oppression or terror.
These turn out to be some of the best books. The Giver by Lois Lowry and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells are a couple of my favorites, and of course Fahrenheit 451. I didn't fancy Brave New World so much, for some reason.
Has anyone ever read The Guardians by John Christopher? It was recommended to me and I've never heard of it...
"Love all; Trust a few; Do wrong to none." --William Shakespeare
#2re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:22amClockwork Orange should definitely be on the list. And 1984.
#2re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:55amI thought those wre useally refered to as "negitive-uptopia" books, but I'm glad there's a much better name out there! Handmaiden's Tale is another.
#3re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 7:40am
The Master and Margarita
Darkness at Noon
1984
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Roscoe
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/15/03
#4re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 11:51am
CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE WANTING SEED, both by Anthony Burgess.
Also, P.D. James' CHILDREN OF MEN. Very different from the film, well worth reading.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
Phantom23
Chorus Member Joined: 7/29/05
#6re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 12:43pm
Some of my favourites are:
1984 by George Orwell
Fahreheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Dystopia is one of my favourite genres! I still have a lot to read in it, though. I haven't gotten to We, Brave New World, Anthem, or a bunch of others yet.
#8re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:11pm
The Handmaids Tale- Margaret Atwood.
a fantastic book.
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
SorryGrateful
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/10/05
#9re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:21pm
The Handmaid's Tale is fantastic, but Margaret Atwood also wrote Oryx and Crake about fifteen years later. That one is just as intriguing.
The Season of Passage by Christopher Pike (one of his adult novels) is also really wonderful. I think it fits under dystopia, but I could be wrong.
You promised me poems. ~Tricky
#10re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:22pmAtwood is one of my fave writers--Cat's Eye and The Blind Assassin are also quite good--esp Cat's...
SorryGrateful
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/10/05
#11re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:29pm
I want to roll around in Margaret Atwood's literature. It's so good that it's delicious! Have you read The Edible Woman? It's one of her earliest, if not her first, novel and it actually borders on what is considered "chick lit" today. It's truly intriguing.
I LOVE YOU, MARGARET ATWOOD!!!
You promised me poems. ~Tricky
#12re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 1:30pmthe copper elephant by adam rapp
Less is more
Ugly is beautiful
"My brother plays a drag queen... and I'm surprised he looks as good as he does in drag." - Adam Rapp
"thanks, abba. now i'll forever have an image of you as a tattoed hardcore straightedge grrl savaging people in the mosh pit." - papalovesmambo
"Yeah Abba. All the filthy crap you spew out there on those boards. I for one, am equally shocked. :-P" - AnnaK
Ugly is beautiful
"My brother plays a drag queen... and I'm surprised he looks as good as he does in drag." - Adam Rapp
"thanks, abba. now i'll forever have an image of you as a tattoed hardcore straightedge grrl savaging people in the mosh pit." - papalovesmambo
"Yeah Abba. All the filthy crap you spew out there on those boards. I for one, am equally shocked. :-P" - AnnaK
Auggie27
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/13/03
#13re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 4:03pm
Atwood's has eerily proved prophetic.
Not exactly dystopian, but my favorite cautionary tale of the cold war was ON THE BEACH by Neville Shute. I recently re-read it, and re-watched the underrated Showtime miniseries with Armand Assante and Rachel Ward made in 2000. I still find it one of the most affecting portraits of a post-apocolypse world. Also worth seeing: TESTAMENT with Jane Alexander. Still a powerful film. (And a British film -- never shown -- anyone reall the title? It made it on PBS, I think.)
What's startling about the 2000 ON THE BEACH is the shorthanded portrayal of an arrogant American president. He waits for China to blink, and then all hell is unleashed in a 37 minute war, with the fallout killing everyone, ultimately.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
Kringas
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/27/05
#14re: Best Dystopia Books
Posted: 5/30/07 at 4:22pmI'm going to add a vote for The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, although I do have to say I found the latter pretty dull until the last hundred pages or so, when it really started to come together. No one does apocalyptic fiction like Margaret Atwood.
"How do you like THAT 'misanthropic panache,' Mr. Goldstone?" - PalJoey
DG
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/2/05
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