It Could Be Worse… Great Dystopian Reads

Posted on June 7, 2017

by Amy H

Feeling blue about the state of the world recently? There is a wonderfully strange comfort in reading great stories about people who have it WAY worse and still manage to rise above, overcome, or plain old just barely survive. Somehow, knowing that even fictional crazy injustice can be overcome means a lot. Maybe we don’t have it so bad after all …

Interesting Dystopian Reads

Check out these books from your local Library

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson WalkerThe Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker Print | Audiobook Playaway audio | eBook | eAudio

The coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth’s rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.

Change Agent by Daniel SuarezChange Agent by Daniel Suarez Print

Drugged and abducted while standing on a crowded train platform, Kenneth Durand, an Interpol agent working against black-market labs that perform illegal embryo augmentation, awakens to discover he has been genetically transformed into his most wanted suspect.

The Diamond Age by Neal StephensonThe Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson Print

In a far future Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist has made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device created to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It also contains subversive information destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity. The smuggled copy soon falls into the “wrong” hands of a poor street urchin who may or may not be civilization’s savior.

Feed by M.T. AndersonFeed by M.T. Anderson Print | eBook | eAudio

Set in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains, Titus, a student whose spring break vacation to the moon is disrupted by a hacker and a girl who decides to fight her implant’s messages.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret AtwoodThe Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Print | Audiobook | eBook

The Republic of Gilead rises after a radical theocratic revolution in the former the United States. Due to declining birthrates, fertile women are dispersed to high-ranking men as baby-making handmaids, and those who cannot reproduce are exiled to an uber-polluted wasteland. One of these handmaids, Offred, not only remembers her life before the revolution, but is determined to reclaim it. Currently a Hulu mini-series starring Elisabeth Moss.

Incarceron by Catherine FisherIncarceron by Catherine Fisher Print | Audiobook | eBook | eAudio

To free herself from an upcoming arranged marriage, Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, a futuristic prison with a mind of its own, decides to help a young prisoner escape.

The Passage by Justin CroninThe Passage by Justin Cronin Print | Audiobook

A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only a six-year-old orphan girl can stop. A television series for Fox is currently in pre-production.

Ready Player One by Ernest ClineReady Player One by Ernest Cline Print | Audiobook | eBook | eAudio

Immersing himself in a mid-21st-century technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world’s super-wealthy creator, who has promised that the winner will be his heir. Film version directed by Stephen Spielberg due out March, 2018.

Ship Breaker by Paolo BacigalupiShip Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi Print | eBook

In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer survives by scavenging materials from grounded oil tankers, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl. Rumored to be in development for a film.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain NeuvelSleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel Print | eBook | eAudio

Years after waking up dozens of feet below the ground on the palm of what seems to be a mysterious giant metal hand, a top-level physicist leads a team to discover the nature of the hand, where it came from and what it portends for humanity. A unique debut that describes a hunt for truth, power, and giant body parts…

Starfish by Peter WattsStarfish by Peter Watts Print

A revolutionary geothermal power facility is built at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, requiring a bio-engineered crew–people physically altered to withstand the pressure and breathe seawater– to live and work in the undersea darkness. The only people suitable for long-term employment in these experimental power stations are borderline psychotics; how many of them can survive while a deadly foe approaches from the deep?

Station Eleven by Emily St. John MandelStation Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel Print | Audiobook | eBook | eAudio

Set in the eerie days of the collapse of our civilization, this is the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered surviving outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

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