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Subgenres/Sci-Fi/Dystopian

Dystopian

Dystopian fiction imagines a society gone wrong, usually by design. Surveillance, control and resistance drive stories that hold a mirror up to our own trends.

Parent genre: Sci-FiModern form from Zamyatin's We in the 1920s4,299 books classified in Saga

Where dystopian came from

The dystopia began as utopia's shadow. A key early modern example is Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, written in Soviet Russia around 1920 and banned there, in which citizens live in glass apartments under a regime that has abolished the individual. It was a clear influence on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) imagined a society controlled by pleasure, conditioning and genetic caste. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) imagined one controlled by surveillance, fear and the rewriting of language and history. Between them they set out the two great dystopian nightmares, and readers still argue about which one we are closer to.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1962) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) extended the tradition. Lois Lowry's The Giver (1993) and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games (2008) made it a central form of young adult fiction, with teenagers leading the resistance.

What separates it from neighbouring subgenres

Dystopian fiction is defined by its society. The world works, but it works against the people in it, usually by design and often in the name of their own good.

Post-Apocalyptic

Post-apocalyptic fiction is set after society collapses. Dystopian fiction is set in a society that has survived, and rules too well. Many dystopias are built on the ruins of an apocalypse.

Utopian

A utopia imagines a better society; a dystopia, a worse one. Many dystopias are utopias seen from below, by the people the perfect system was built on.

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is usually dystopian, but its villains are corporations and its tools are technology. Classic dystopias are more often about states and ideologies.

Climate Fiction

Some climate fiction imagines societies that respond to crisis with control, rationing and exclusion. Those books are dystopias too.

A dystopia is a society that has solved its problems. The novel is about the people it solved them with.

How it reads

Expect a protagonist who begins inside the system, often loyal to it, and slowly learns what it costs. Rules, slogans and institutions are carefully invented, and the reader recognises their roots in the present. Resistance, betrayal and escape are classic plots.

Endings vary. The classic adult dystopias are often bleak, and the system wins. Young adult dystopias more often end in revolution, though the cost is usually high.

Frequently asked

What was the first dystopian novel?+

Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, written around 1920, is often called the grandfather of the modern dystopian novel. It is a clear influence on Nineteen Eighty-Four, and is often read alongside Brave New World.

What's the difference between dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction?+

Dystopian fiction is set in a functioning but oppressive society. Post-apocalyptic fiction is set after society has collapsed. A dystopia can be built after an apocalypse, as in The Hunger Games.

Where should a new reader start?+

Nineteen Eighty-Four is the defining classic. For something faster and more recent, The Hunger Games is the young adult landmark.

Is The Handmaid's Tale dystopian?+

Yes. It imagines a theocratic regime in a near-future United States that strips women of their rights, and it is one of the most widely read dystopias of the last half-century.

Why are there so many young adult dystopias?+

Dystopias are about growing up inside rules you didn't choose and learning to question them, which suits teenage protagonists. The success of The Hunger Games around 2008 to 2012 made the form a publishing wave.

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