Dystopia - Notable Dystopias

Notable Dystopias

For a more comprehensive list, see List of dystopian literature.

• When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) by H. G. Wells features a 22nd-century dehumanized, industrialized society with a caste system, ruled by the name of Sleeper, a lethargic "owner" of all the world's industry.

• R.U.R. (1920) by Karel Čapek. A science fiction play in the Czech language, R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the modern Robot concept, and the word "Robot" invented by his brother Josef Čapek, to the English language and to science fiction as a whole. Čapek's robots can also be seen as the first androids: they are in fact organic. Despite being vastly underrated since it's popular debut, displaced by the works of writers not properly crediting Capek to follow, R.U.R. is the first elaborate depiction of a machine take-over, and thus influencing all subsequent Science Fiction morality tales involving Robots, Automatons, Clones, and Androids to follow.

• We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin. A satire of the newly-established Soviet Union, and of what the future of Russia might hold.

• Brave New World (1931) - Aldous Huxley's satire of modern hedonistic society.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, a popular and perhaps the most famous example of a dystopia in modern culture.

• Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury - The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed. A film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 was released in 1966.

• A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess - A satire portraying a future and dystopian Western society with—based on contemporary trends—a culture of extreme youth rebellion and violence: it explores the violent nature of humans, human free will to choose between good or evil, and the desolation of free will as a solution to evil.

• Blade Runner (1982) directed by Ridley Scott, dystopian science fiction action film.

• The Terminator (1984) - A film that involves a humanoid machine (called a terminator) from the future attempting to assassinate Sarah Connor. Some scenes of the film show a post-apocalyptic future where a computer (called Skynet) has attempted to exterminate humanity by launching nuclear weapons (turns out, skynet only killed about 50% of the human population). Sarah Connor happens to be the mother of John Connor, who is the leader of the human resistance against Skynet and its machine armies in the future.

• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) - A very popular film that involves a more-advanced terminator robot trying to assassinate young John Connor. A reprogrammed terminator robot has also been sent back to protect John. Some scenes show a post-apocalyptic year 2029 where the human resistance has almost overthrown skynet. The future looks just like the future described in the first Terminator movie.

• Virtual Light (1993) by William Gibson depicts a world (in 2006) where corporations dominate society, the middle class has gone, and wealthy, powerful elites dominate government. The book is set in a divided Southern California (SoCal) separated from the north of the former state (NoCal). As a sign of the collapse of the efficacy of democratic politics, the president is black.

• The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry depicts a future in which human society has largely rid itself of strife by minimizing the individual capacity for choice, love, and knowledge. The story develops around an adolescent boy, Jonas, who is tasked with preserving a secret cache of cultural memory.