Dystopian fiction is interested in imagining what would happen if everything went horribly wrong some time in the future (distant, or not-too distant). Consequently sometimes it has a bit of a sci-fi feel (like the spaceship setting in Across the Universe), but it’s nearly always a bit bleak (like the list below!). The horrible wrong-ness can be due to social, political (or socio-political) problems (see The Hunger Games, Divergent, 1984 for example). It can also be due to environmental problems (Ship Breaker, The Water Wars, Blood Red Road etc).
Here’s a selection of dystopian/futuristic titles for you to work your way through. Note that this isn’t an exhaustive list, but if you think there’s something worthy that we haven’t mentioned then email us about it!
Updated March 2013
Feed, M T Anderson- Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi
- Genesis, Bernard Beckett
- The Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins
Matched, Crossed and Reached, Ally Condie- The Maze Runner trilogy, James Dashner
- Salt trilogy, Maurice Gee
- Lord of the Flies, William Golding
- Gone series, Michael Grant
- Blood of the Lamb trilogy, Mandy Hager
- When We Wake, Karen Healey
- The Carbon Diaries, Saci Lloyd
- The Giver and Son, Lois Lowry
- Legend and Prodigy, Marie Lu
Bumped and Thumped, Megan McCafferty- The Declaration series, Gemma Malley
- The Unidentified, Rae Mariz
- Chaos Walking trilogy, Patrick Ness
- Delirium and Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
The Adoration of Jenna Fox and The Fox Inheritance, Mary E Pearson- Life As We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone, and This World We Live In, Susan Beth Pfeffer
- Under the Never Sky and Through the Ever Night, Veronica Rossi
Divergent and Insurgent, Veronica Roth- The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and The Dark and Hollow Places, Carrie Ryan
- Unwind, Neal Shusterman
- Article 5, Kristin Simmons
Skinned, Crashed and Wired, Robin Wasserman- Uglies series, Scott Westerfeld
- Blood Red Road and Rebel Heart, Moira Young
- All These Things I’ve Done and Because it is My Blood, Gabrielle Zevin
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