The Future Is Now: Dystopia Novels that Feel Uncomfortably Real
- unabridgedpod
- May 19
- 18 min read
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books)
Because I think dystopian novels are more relevant than ever, I decided to update this post with a few new dystopian reads that had an impact on me. (New books are marked with an asterisk.) Here's my original introduction:
Last week, I finished Laila Lalami's The Dream Hotel (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm). It's one of those books that feels world shifting. Somehow, Lalami is both building a world that isn't possible (yet), a world in which the government can track our dreams and use them to predict our potential future crimes (a more bureaucracy-filled sort of Minority Report). But she's also VERY much commenting on our current world, in which people can be detained, their rights withheld, on the slimmest of rationales. It's a book that is deeply, deeply scary and yet also felt like the book I needed to read to process the headlines. I really can't recommend it enough.
It made me think then, of course, of other dystopian novels that have resonated. When I was teaching at my previous school, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was a huge resurgence of dystopian novels directed at YA readers that captured my (and my students') attention. This is the era of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Neal Shusterman's Unwind (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Veronica Roth's Divergent (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), James Dashner's The Maze Runner (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Lauren Oliver's Delirium (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Ally Condie's Matched (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Scott Westerfeld's The Uglies (Bookshop.org) . . . I could go on.
They were, of course, hearkening back to the classics, the books that you should (if you haven't) absolutely read: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Bookshop.org). So many of those still resonate on deep and disturbing levels. But there are some newer, perhaps lesser-known dystopian novels that are absolutely worth your time. Here are nine recommendations to check out:
Megan Angelo's Followers (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
Megan Angelo's Followers scared me. Told in alternating time periods and focusing primarily on two characters--Orla in 2016 and Marlow in 2051--the novel takes on the implications of fame, reality tv, social media, the influencer culture, technology, and the diminishing line between our private and public lives.
Orla is a small-town girl who moved to New York to escape the oppressiveness of the expectations she finds among her high school friends when she returns home after college. Seeking a career as a writer, she makes her living by following celebrities' lives and publishing the most trivial of details about them, including what they eat on their salad and the types of boots they wear. She shares an apartment with a stranger, Floss . . . who becomes more than that. Floss seeks out Orla's help in building a life around fame and influence. As Floss drags Orla along into her a lifestyle protected from reality while professing to shape it, Orla begins to lose her connection to her own dreams.
In 2051, Marlow lives in Constellation, a town that exists on camera. (I thought here of movies like The Truman Show and of Ed; there are definitely also touches of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four.) A walking advertisement for Hysteryl, an anti-anxiety medication, Marlow's life, marriage, and thoughts are carefully curated by the network who broadcasts the only world she knows. As they begin crafting a character arc that will lead her into a new stage of life, Marlow looks back to her past and tries to uncover the stories of her parents and her own childhood.
The parallel stories travel side by side, alternating to depict our world and to project what feels like an inevitable outcome. I had to put this book down more than once because it is TOO good at shaping two all-too-real worlds in our present and our future.
Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
This dystopian novel focuses on the year 2025(!). Lauren Olamina and her family live in a very-different Los Angeles, one walled off from the rest of the world in hope of safety. Lauren has hyperempathy, which means she feels others' pain to an extreme level and makes her both attuned to others and, sometimes, vulnerable to them.
There's some phenomenal world building right at the beginning, and it soon becomes clear that Lauren sees her family's current situation as a tenuous one. She's invested in preparing for something to end the life they have and begins learning and training in preparation for a huge number of unpredictable possibilities.
At the center of the book are a huge number of social issues and questions: Butler deals here with issues of race, gender, religion, sexuality . . . moral questions abound. It's a fascinating, thought-provoking novel with the resonance that any good dystopian book should have. There is a sequel, Parable of the Talents, that I hope to get to soon. This was an absolute five-star read for me (I recommend the audio, read by Lynne Thigpen).
Kelly DeVos's Day Zero (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
“If you’re going through hell, keep going."
Day Zero, a near-future YA thriller, launches the reader into a frighteningly familiar world dominated by political conflict between two parties. The Opposition focuses on rugged individualism and opposes taxes on the rich, while The Spark embraces identity politics and using government to seek equality for all and to eradicate poverty. After the New Depression created unrest in the U.S., The Opposition took advantage of citizens’ resentment to elect Ammon Carver to the Presidency, which he won with “money, influence, bigotry and hate” (loc. 941).
In the midst of this world is Susan “Jinx” Marshall, who lives with her mother, a teacher; her stepfather Jay, a security expert at a bank; younger brother Charles; and stepsister Makeeba. Her stepbrother Tyrell, on whom Jinx has a huge crush, is away at school. Jinx’s dad, Dr. Maxwell Marshall, is Dr. Doomsday, a survival expert whose book Dr. Doomsday’s Guide to Ultimate Survival provides advice for how to survive if (when?) an apocalypse hits. Advice from Dr. Doomsday appears throughout Day Zero, reminding us that “Everyone in this world seeks power. Those who will stop at nothing to attain it will also never willingly relinquish it” (loc. 483). He is also friends with Ammon Carver, a fact that drives another wedge between Jinx and Makeeba, a fierce advocate for The Spark and its failed Presidential candidate David Rosenthal.
DeVos creates a clear, distinct, and well-developed world within a chapter or two and then sets off a series of explosions that changes everything. Jinx, Makeeba, and Charles escape because of Dr. Marshall’s survival training and then return to a home in chaos to find that Jinx’s stepfather has been accused of being part of a conspiracy against the government. As she tries to keep her family together, Jinx must deal with a shifting understanding of who to trust. Pursued by agents of The Opposition, Jinx and her family work through one challenge after another, striving both to survive and for something more, to act morally as they come to understand the roots of an insidious and power-hungry corruption that goes deeper than they initially understand.
Day Zero strikes the balance between the personal and the political beautifully, reflecting the tension that dominates Jinx’s own life. The secondary characters work well to help the reader understand Jinx: her maturity, the moments when she falls into a natural self-interest, and her conflicted loyalties. I thoroughly enjoyed both the adventure-packed plot and deVos’s attention to deeper political and psychological issues. Watching the way these characters react to the changing society provided insight into the world of the book and—as the best books do—raised fascinating questions about our own world. I thoroughly enjoyed Day Zero and look forward to Kelly deVos’s conclusion to this duology.
*Omar El Akkad's American War (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
The first time I read American War, it had a big impact on me. It's on a ton of lists for environmental novels, and since I've been working on adding more of those to my classroom, I've read it several times, both in print and audio. It affected me even more upon re-reading. Some of that is because of our current situation, which made certain sections—the second American Civil War, a horrible plague, the effects of climate change—resonate more. And some of that is the inevitable richness that comes from re-reading a deep and nuanced novel.
This is a powerful, important read driven by nuanced characters and a compelling plot. Sarat, who we watch grow from childhood, is an amazing character who tries to do the right thing for herself, her family, and her country. I watched some of the decisions she made with horror, and yet El Akkad makes us feel her reasons for making the decisions that she does.
Here's the synopsis:
"An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.
"Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike."
*Angela Flournoy's The Wilderness (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
So, if you choose to read The Wilderness, you'll be wondering why on earth I put the book on this list. Most of it is decidedly not dystopian. The book weaves between characters, genres, and timelines, shifting from story to story in a way that builds on itself. But—trust me!—there is a dystopian component that is incredibly resonant, a near-future section that I found to be so, so powerful. The entire book is worth reading, but it's that section that earned The Wilderness its spot on this list.
Synopsis:
"Desiree, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.
"Desiree is estranged from her sister Danielle, and the two nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a 'good' man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
"As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship."
Gish Jen's The Resisters (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
Gish Jen's The Resisters was not at all what I thought it would be. (Somehow, I had in my head that it was a baseball book set during WWII? I have NO idea where that idea came from.) Anyway, the book does have a baseball focus . . . but that's about all that I got right.
I should say, before moving on, that I LOVED this book. The audio (read by William DeMeritt) is just great.
The setting is the near-future world of AutoAmerica rules by Aunt Nettie (basically, the internet, which has become a powerful, autonomous entity.) Society is divided in two: the "Netted," who have been favored by Aunt Nettie and live lives of privilege, including the right to work and to live within society; and the "Surplus," outcasts, many of whom live on boats. They're not allowed to work, and they're monitored constantly by their smart homes who serve as advisors (the advice always favors Aunt Nettie's will, of course) and monitors.
The Resisters focuses on a small Surplus family: Grant, the narrator; his wife Eleanor, an attorney who is actively resisting the government; and their daughter Gwen who is a baseball prodigy. Grant and Eleanor recognize Gwen's passion early and set up an underground baseball league so that she can practice. (Grant takes great pleasure in finding new ways to undermine Aunt Nettie's restrictions.) When AutoAmerica prepares to compete against ChinRussia in the newly resurrected Olympics, they seek Gwen's talent . . . but also her submission.
This is one of those books that feels just close enough to our current world to make me ask uncomfortable questions about the amount of information we agree to give over every time we use the internet and social media. It's also, of course, about what we're willing to sacrifice for comfort and convenience. I think this is a brilliant novel, even for those—like me—who aren't drawn to sports.
Christina C. Jones's Wonder (Libro.fm)
"All our science and technology and politics and meant nothing once [the earth] decided she wanted us off, that we'd done too much and gone too far" (9).
Christina C. Jones's Wonder is a compelling novel that successfully weaves together several threads: a re-telling of Alice in Wonderland; a dystopian novel that takes on class conflict and environmental concerns; and an open-door romance between two strong characters. Her website, beingmrsjones.com, says she is known for "seamlessly weav[ing] the complexities of modern life into captivating tales of black romance," and this novel certainly fulfills that goal.
Alyson Little lives with her sister, Nadiah, in the Mids, the heavily regulated, middle class section of the former United States. It sits--economically and geographically--between the Burrows and the Apex, where Aly goes each day for her job at a salon. Aly stays far away from the Burrows; she has never set foot in the lawless, grubby underbelly of her world, relieved that she her home lies in relative safety. That all changes when Nadiah's friend Bunny tells Aly that Nadiah has been injured searching the ruins of the former San Francisco's Bay Bridge and is hiding out in an abandoned house. Aly and Bunny rush to her aid and find an empty house and a trail that leads directly into the Burrows.
It's in the Burrows that Aly meets an array of characters correlating to Lewis Carroll's creations AND discovers that what the government has said about this other world may not be true. This revelation leads Aly to be questioning all of the truths that have shaped her worldview and her own identity.
I thoroughly enjoyed Jones's reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, the clever ways that she envisions them as fitting into this new world. The romance here is satisfying, the world building is strong, and the questions the novel poses provoke thoughts relevant to our current situation.
*Kim Liggett's The Grace Year (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
I picked up The Grace Year on a whim (shelf talkers at my library are wildly effective for me!)—it had been on my list for a long time, but I'd honestly forgotten what it was about.
Wow.
The novel really resonated at a time when some influential individuals are calling for an end to the Nineteenth Amendment—that's the one that guarantees women the right to vote. The protagonist, Tierney, has long known that her "grace year," when young women turn sixteen, will mean banishment and trauma for her. She lives in a society that demonizes women, isolating them in an attempt to control their "power" (both real and imaginary). The dynamics of this society, in which men have turned against women and, in turn, women turn against each other, is so powerfully depicted. I thought this was an incredible work of dystopian fiction that I picked up just at the right time.
Synopsis:
"No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.
"In Garner County, girls are banished for their sixteenth year to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage.
"But not all of them will make it home alive.
"Tierney James dreams of a better life—but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that there’s more to fear about the grace year than the brutal elements and the poachers in the woods.
"Their greatest threat may very well be each other.
"With sharp prose and gritty realism, Liggett's The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between."
Marie Lu's Rebel (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
I was absolutely thrilled to pick up Marie Lu's Rebel, the fourth book in her YA dystopian series Legend. It's been a while--book 3, Champion, came out in 2013--so I was nervous about re-entering the world. But the experiences of Day and June, the alternating protagonists from the original trilogy, came back quickly. (Proceed with caution if you want to completely avoid spoilers!)
This book does shift a few things. First, the alternating voices come from Day (now known as Daniel) and Eden, his younger brother, rather than Day and June June. Set 10 years after the events of Champion, Rebel picks up with Eden as a brilliant grad student at a university in Ross City, Antarctica, and Daniel as an agent for the Antarctica Intelligence Service. The revolution they escaped and the people they lost are always fresh in their minds, but they work to move on from the horror of their past.
Antarctica has worked to create a society that rewards morality: every citizen has a chip implanted that tracks their behavior. The "right" actions result in higher levels--so, if you help an elderly person cross the street, for example, you earn points, and (eventually) your level goes up--while, of course, the wrong actions (including protesting the system or the government) result in loss of points and lower levels. These levels are projected electronically over everyone's heads, and everyone else can see them, so citizens always know where they fall in relation to those around them. These levels control EVERYTHING: admission to college, access to health care, housing, ability to roam the city. It's this system (and its drawbacks) that becomes a focus for Daniel and Eden. They become aware that it's nearly impossible for people on a low level to work their way up because it's difficult to always do the "right" thing when they live in poverty. They're willing, however, to go to different lengths to work around that level system.
What makes all of this so compelling (beyond my interest in the ramifications of this type of concept) is the way that Daniel and Eden choose to respond and the relationship between their pasts and their reactions. Each boy was, of course, hurt by the horrors of the Republic of America, and each is inspired by those memories quite differently. Clearly, I could go on and on--I really loved this book--but I'll try to restrain myself. I'll just say that if you haven't read the Legend trilogy, I recommend picking it up right away! And then dive right in to Rebel. (Ashley talked more about the Legend series on this episode: 193: Get Reading Momentum Going with Our Favorite Fantasy and Dystopian Series Recs.)
Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
There are some books that you just pick up at the right time. Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts was that book for me.
I've devoured all of Ng's books, so it's no surprise that I loved this one, too, though it is a bit of a departure from her first two novels.
This is a dystopian novel set in a near-future where America has turned against its Asian-American citizens, creating a law called PACT that allows the removal of children from their families (due to unpatriotic behavior) and removing books from libraries and schools.
This story focuses on a child named Bird whose mother, Margaret, left him and his father several years before. Bird knows that her poetry had become the centerpiece of PACT protests, but he's never been able to read it, and his memories of her have become quite fuzzy. He's left only with fragments of stories that she told him, of games that they played.
I won't say more about the plot because there's such power in its unfolding. But oh my goodness, this novel resonated so much, reinforcing all that I believe about the power of art and stories.
We did a full episode about this book if you're interested: 246: Celeste Ng's OUR MISSING HEARTS - January 2023 Book Club.
Veronica Roth's Poster Girl (Bookshop.org)
I was totally infatuated with Veronica Roth's Divergent. It was a whole-school read at my old school, and students (in general) just loved it. While I didn't feel as strongly about the rest of the trilogy, I nevertheless devoured all of it.
I read her followup, the Carve the Mark duology, and enjoyed it. I still need to get to The Chosen Ones, so I can't comment on that one,
Nevertheless, I feel as if Poster Girl marks a new era for Roth.
This is a dystopian novel written for adults. It's dark and gritty and incredibly compelling.
Poster Girl takes place in a world that has been through multiple transitions of government, which has resulted in a walled-off community of prisoners, including Sonya Kantor who was once the face of the Delegation. It was a government that ran on rules, on points, on quantifying every action of a person's day—those actions were tracked through brain implants that included tiny cameras embedded in one's eyes. Sonya, whose parents worked for this government, thrived in this system. The ultimate game player, she was able to rack up points, earning privileges as she went.
Until it all came down.
Now, she's walled off from a society that rejected her and everything she stood for. Until the government—through a former companion-turned-betrayer—offers her a chance to earn her way out.
Sonya is a complex, at times unlikable, protagonist who is nevertheless empathetic and realistic. The society Roth creates here works because it feels only a few steps away from what's possible today, making use of current technology but pushing it just a bit (as the best dystopian books do).
It's a slim novel, a powerful story, told with restraint. I'll definitely be looking for what Roth writes next . . . and I may be revisiting Divergent some time soon.
*Ariel Sullivan's Conform (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
I've been in a speculative fiction mood recently, and Ariel Sullivan's dystopian novel Conform was just right. It's compelling, thoughtful, and the perfect mix of societal critique and escape.
I recently watched the film adaptation of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, and while it wasn't great, it did remind me of how much I loved that series, and Conform is definitely reminiscent of it (though it's written for adults rather than for a YA audience). I thought that the consideration of the ways that technology can empower an elite group rang all-too-true right now.
The one caveat? This is the first of a nine(!)-book series, so you may have a while to wait. But still, it was great.
Synopsis:
"A lifelong outcast, twenty-seven-year-old Emeline spends her days alone, sorting ancient art for destruction. Centuries after a catastrophic war nearly decimated humanity, society is now ruled by an elusive and technologically advanced group called the Illum, who constantly monitor the population’s health and mandate procreation contracts. But Emeline’s bleak existence is shattered when, for the first time in decades, an Illum named Collin takes a Mate: Emeline.
"Baffled as to why she was chosen, Emeline is swept into the dangerous game of the Courting, where one wrong move can mean elimination. Soon, she discovers a rebellion rising in secret, and that her Mate may be keeping secrets of his own. Collin is confusing, both cold and protective, and worse, she finds herself drawn to the very last person she should be falling for: Hal, one of the resistance leaders.
"As she draws closer to both Collin and Hal, the Illum exercise their power in increasingly brutal ways, forcing Emeline to question everything—most of all whether she’ll have to give up her heart and even her life to stop them."
Ben H. Winters's Golden State (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
Ben H. Winters's Golden State gave me crazy Fahrenheit 451 vibes. It's definitely not cribbing heavily from Bradbury's novel, but it has the same feeling of projecting for readers a world that's just a year or two from being possible.
Lazlo Ratesic is a Speculator, a sort of police officer whose job is to enforce the truth. His position came through ability--not everyone CAN sense lies--so it's a career that developed by affinity and by family tradition. Both Lazlo's father and his older brother were also Speculators. Lazlo's talent, though, pales in comparison to his brother Charlie, whose genius made him a hero upon his death in the line of duty. Speculators are tasked with finding and arresting those who lie--the Golden State is a society that does not tolerate lies or fiction or, for the most part, speculation. It's a world that doesn't trust stories, that films everything to create an objective reality against which any interpretation can be tested and proved right or wrong. People keep journals to account for their every movement.
The story begins as Lazlo is called to investigate a death--it seems to be an accident, but there's some question as to its cause. On the investigation, Lazlo has to bring a new Speculator to help train her. Initially, Lazlo sees nothing strange about the incident, but as he and Speculator Paige interview those involved, she convinces him that there is more to the facts than what they can see. Their investigation digs into the truth, into the past, and into the possibility of an objective truth.
I enjoyed Golden State a great deal--there were some sections where the pace dragged a bit, but overall, I found Lazlo's search for truth and his struggle to understand that possibility to be compelling.
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