Could anyone recommend me some books from that category (preferably written between 1930’s and 1990’s)
So far I’ve read:
Fahrenheit 451
1984
Brave New World
Lost Horizon
Back when I was into those sorts of books, I greatly enjoyed A Canticle for Liebowitz, but the first 2/3 of that book are more like post-apocalyptic fiction, which often has a similiar feel to dystopia but explores different ideas.
You seem to have read the important ones, so everything else is just dressing on the salad.
Try Ayn Rand’s Anthem.
I second Anthem.
Try A Clockwork Orange,
We (it’s by some Russian guy)
if I can think of anymore, I’ll post.
I’d have to dis-reccomend Anthem. Although it is important and in the correct genre, I absolutely hated it.
The Handmaid’s Tale - it’s kind of a girly book, but it’s definitely dystopian.
There’s also an older novel, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that’s interesting.
For a utopian novel, try Island, by Aldous Huxley.
I also have to second the reccomendation of The Handmaids Tale. Good stuff.
The Lord of the Rings. The Shire is surely a more believable and sustainable utopia than most, and Mordor is one of the worst places to live imaginable.
Valley of the Dolls by J. Susann
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis
Not exactly dystopias in the classic sense of the term (except LTZ) but still cracking good reads.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
Not completely dystopian. But damn good none the less.
I’m reading Skinner’s Walden 2 and it’s great so far. Nice intro to bahivourism as well.
Behaviorism
This Perfect Day (Ira Levin).
Thank you all, that sounds interesting. I’ve already read Anthem, IMHO it was pretty good… but then again, any non-fantasy/detective/romance book would be great for me.
I was thinking, and I don’t really know if this falls into the category, but Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach.
It’s …interesting, and even now I can’t decide if it’s utopian, dystopian or neither.
<shudder>
Reading the description of the land of Ecotopia, and then reading Ralph Nader say “None of the happy conditions in Ecotopia are beyond the technical or resource reach of our society,” (italics added)…just frightening. That he considers a 200 year regression of the human race to be “happy” is no surprise since he’s a Green, but matriarchy? Bah! And the quotes from environmentalists all seemed to indicate their approval. Maybe I better read this one sometime to know what they’re really after, if I wouldn’t be horrified at each page turn.
I guess this is why we enjoy fiction like this, it lets us explore ideas and see which ones collapse, which sustain themselves, and evaluate what we think of the consequences of an idea put to action.
There are two different English translations of this book - most people that I know prefered the one by Clarence Brown.
I guess this is why we enjoy fiction like this, it lets us explore ideas and see which ones collapse, which sustain themselves, and evaluate what we think of the consequences of an idea put to action.
I think that most of these events (that someone wrote in a book several decades ago and they came true… in some way) were not predicted, they were inspired by those books.
And, I’ll try to stay away from We for some time. I don’t like translations much (except those books that are really good), and reading in Russian makes me shudder.
John Varley’s Eight World series qualifies as both a dystopia and utopia. The series is spread across at least three novels and a couple dozen shorter works and Varley has admitted he has not bothered to maintain internal consistency between the seperate works. But the basic idea is that aliens arrived and eliminated virtually all human life on Earth (because we were bothering the dolphins which the aliens considered the only important lifeform on the planet). A handful of humans survived on the moon and began rebuilding.
The books for the most part are set a century or so later. Humanity has spread through the solar system and AI computers and nanotechnology has given people almost every physical comfort they could desire. But most people are subconsciously aware that the race is going nowhere: the aliens are so far above humanity their cannot even be sensed; the aliens who wiped out most of humanity once could conceivably finish the job at any time; and in the absense of FTL travel, the human race is apparently never going to leave the Solar system. So people essentially have everything they could want except hope for a meaningful future.
The giver and Gathering blue by Lois Lowry. Children’s literature, but well worth reading.