Dystopian Stories

Real-life historical events such as war, revolution, the rise of repressive governments or new technologies inspired Dystopian authors to write about future worlds of oppression, terror, suffering, and loss of individual freedoms, or battles between man and machine. The emergence of Communism and police states inspired Dystopian works, that were then repopularized when current global political events triggered a new wave of citizen fears.

Thanks to George Orwell, the adjective "Orwellian" describes a situation, idea, or societal condition which is destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. Well-known dystopian novels include:

• 1984
• Animal Farm
• Brave New World
• The Scarlet Letter
• The Handmaid's Tale
• I, Robot
• Never Let Me Go

Surprisingly, one of the first modern Dystopian novels was written by Jack London in 1908, titled The Iron Heel, portraying America under tyrannical rule. It was written less than ten years before the Bolsheviks took over Russia, ushering in Communism.

Another early Dystopian novel written by a priest who was monsignor to the Pope, Lord of the World (1907), was a doomsday novel in which the anti-Christ rules the end of the world. Dystopian fiction was a direct reaction to the popularity of Utopian literature in the second half of the 19th century. "Too good to be true" just wasn't realistic.

Renowned Dystopian authors include: H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Jack London, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Margaret Atwood, Lois Lowry, and Suzanne Collins.

The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick is a satirical dystopian story about a man who fixed machines, with "no business in the future."

Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick is artificial intelligence with a twist: a machine needs a human brain, which is removed and transplanted into a spaceship to pilot it in outer space.

The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster is a chillingly prescient short story predicting just how dependent we would become on the Internet and smartphones over one hundred years later.

The Pendulum by Ray Bradbury is about an imprisoned scientist responsible for killing the world's most gifted scientists when his time machine exploded and turned them to ash.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells appears at first to be a utopia, but ultimately reveals itself as a nightmarish capitalist dystopia. The Food of the Gods is his sci-fi satire about scientists who take technology too far; a superfood grows kids into giants.

The Empire of the Ants by H.G. Wells is about humans' tenuous dominion on Earth, in which a Brazilian captain attempts to defeat a seemingly unstoppable plague of ants. If you can't get enough about ants, here's a summary of one of our absolute favorite stories of all time, Leiningen Versus the Ants.

Beyond the Door by Philip K. Dick is about the lonely life of the bird in a cuckoo clock; can it love and hate as easily as a real animal?

Tony and the Beetles by Philip K. Dick is about an intergalactic war in which the enemy, a fleet of shiny-shelled insects, was grossly underestimated, even by Tony and his beetle friends.

The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs is a "lost world" story, on the heels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, both are about a broken ecosystem in which individual metamorphosis prevails, rather than evolution. Humans battling dinosaurs, it's a precursor to a favorite dystopian novel-to-movie, Jurassic Park.

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London explores life after a devastating plague kills most of humanity.

The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel is about an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole in which Jeffson discovers that the universe is a place of strife between two powers competing for dominance.

Anthem by Ayn Rand is about a new Dark Age where "I" has been replaced by "we"—Equality 7-2521 and his girlfriend escape to plan a new society based on individualism.

2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. To be or naught to be?

Asleep in Armageddon by Ray Bradbury is about a lone man with the entire world to himself. "Ah, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come..." (Hamlet reference)

In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne is not a typical Jules Verne story; less focus on technology and science (hard science fiction), more of a socio-political state of the world story (soft science fiction).

A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells is about time travelers who come upon an Earth controlled by a single World Government.

The Repairer of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers is itself a dystopia, in which the author invites the reader to disbelieve the authenticity of the story's events (the protagonist is an unreliable narrator because he sustained a head injury and is committed to an insane asylum). He becomes ultra-paranoid and may have committed murder after reading a censored play, The King in Yellow, which itself is a false document the author tries to convince the reader is authentic. A true dystopian horror story.

Dystopian Novels: Lost Freedom

When William Came by H.H. Munro (SAKI) is a futuristic German-occupied London after a war in which England was defeated. SAKI wrote this three years before World War I, during which he was killed by a German sniper.

The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope is about euthanasia as a radical solution to the problem of the aged.

The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells is a story about a man who wakes up after 203 years to discover he's the richest man in the world. "To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before—it commands earth and sea and sky."

The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells reveals man's insignificance in the vastness of space. "For a moment I could half believe there never was a world."

• A Dystopian Future Lesson Plans, grades 9-10
• Lesson Plan: Finding the Science Behind Science Fiction
• The Giver: What are Utopias and Dystopias?
• Lesson Plan grades 9-12: The War of the Worlds
• A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction
• 18 Perfect Short Stories That Pack a Punch
• TED Talk: How to Recognize a Dystopia
• 2011: A Brave New Dystopia (Chris Hedges)
• The Curious Origin of the Word 'Dystopia'
• Overview of the World of Science Fiction
• The Time Machine: Communist Utopia/Capitalist Dystopia
• Biography and Works by Jules Verne
• Biography and Works by H.G. Wells
• Biography and Works by George Orwell
• Biography and Works by Isaac Asimov
• Biography and Works by Ray Bradbury
• Biography and Works by Philip K. Dick
• Works by Ursula Le Guin