Top Ten Dystopian Novels of the 20th Century
This is a list of the best dystopian novels written during the 20th century. Feel free to vote for your favorite, or submit a book you like to the list.
This is my favorite book of all time. A true dystopian masterpiece, this book portrays a world devoid of freedom or happiness and remains that way through the very end. It allows you to see our world today in a new light and try to avoid letting our society come to the same fate as the world of 1984 - a world where wrong is right, 2+2=5, and Big Brother is always watching.
Yep, so many things in this book are happening today. I actually saw an interview where some radical leftist extremists were literally trying to argue that "thought crimes" were a thing that needed to be addressed.
Another stunning dystopian novel, Brave New World is a chilling portrayal of a world where people have become completely oblivious to all that matters. To me, this book is somewhat of a counter to 1984. While the people in 1984 are ruled by force and fear, the citizens in Brave New World are ruled by "conditioning" and drugs so they don't care about what happens to them.
The first genre I would classify Animal Farm as is political satire, but I can also see it being very dystopian at the same time. Using animals as a representation of people and society, Animal Farm tells a tale of how "some animals are more equal than others."
Another great work of literature, A Clockwork Orange is about the morality of forcing someone to do right against their will, or if they should have the ability to choose to do right or wrong. I just recently got to read the whole novel, and I was extremely impressed with this book and the masterpiece that it is.
I think I have a new favorite list!
Fahrenheit 451 depicts more of a "personal" dystopia - the people are oppressed because they wish to be oppressed. It's scary how accurate some parts of Bradbury's world are (think seashell radios).
Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about a society where books are outlawed, and if an existing one is discovered, it is burned. Citizens are kept docile and unrebellious by watching a sort of government-controlled television.
I like this book because it shows the consequences of being extremely one-sided. I know a few far-left and far-right extremists who think this book is garbage... explains a lot.
I don't believe this is an extremely well-known book, but it's wonderful all the same. I have also never really seen this on dystopian book lists or anything, but I would classify it as one based on the premise and storyline of the novel. This is one of my favorite books ever, and I would recommend this to anyone.
We is a captivating tale of a society carefully controlled by the One State. Citizens have no privacy, and everything they do is carefully managed.
Whoever added this, thank you! This is a wonderful novel, and I can't believe I forgot to put this anywhere on the original list.
Also known as the inspiration for the critically acclaimed sci-fi movie Blade Runner.
The Chrysalids is a novel showing what can happen to a society governed completely by religion. Any flaw or imperfection in a person (or any other living being) is believed to be done by Satan. Any person who suffers from any sort of imperfection is either banished to the Fringes or killed.
In Anthem, individuality has been destroyed. Citizens refer to themselves as "we" and other plural pronouns instead of using individual pronouns. Everything has become a collective mindset.
This Perfect Day is a tale of a society where all citizens are given "treatments," or drugs to make them cooperative and unrebellious to the government. Everyone is considered part of "the Family," and if someone begins to think of making their own choices without Uni (a computer that governs the society), they are considered sick and given extra treatments to ensure they do not begin to rebel.
The Handmaid's Tale centers around one horrifying scenario: what if women were reduced to becoming property and forced to have babies against their will? Even as a male, I find this scenario appalling, so I can only imagine what impact this would have on female readers.
While this concept has been done before in novels like Swastika Night, this novel brings it to life more than any other. It features well-written prose, one of the most sympathetic main characters I've read, and terrifying yet well-crafted worldbuilding.
All that threw me off was the absence of quotation marks, but I was able to get accustomed to that early on. I'll end it here before I say enough to ruin the experience of this novel. It's best to go in as blind as possible.