Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1The Iron Heel (1907)The Iron Heel (1907) 7.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1907The earliest warning here, and the most openly partisan: Jack London imagines American wealth fusing into an Oligarchy that crushes organized labor and the socialist movement led by Ernest Everhard. The cleverest touch is the frame. The story is presented as Avis Everhard's manuscript, annotated by…0
  2. 2Мы (1924)Мы (1924) 7.8/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1924Published in English as We. This is the template for the modern dystopia: a spacecraft engineer, D-503, lives in the One State, where citizens are numbered, buildings are made of glass so everyone can be watched, and happiness is treated as a problem of engineering. His diary records the moment…0
  3. 3Brave New World (1932)Brave New World (1932) 7.9/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1932The dystopia that controls people through pleasure rather than pain. Huxley's World State breeds citizens to order, conditions them to love their station and keeps them content with a feel-good drug and easy distraction, so there is no need for a secret police. It is the natural partner to…0
  4. 4It Can't Happen Here (1935)It Can't Happen Here (1935) 7.3/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1935Sinclair Lewis asks how dictatorship would arrive in America, and answers: through a folksy populist senator who promises everything to everyone and wins the 1936 presidential election. Buzz Windrip's private militia, the Minute Men, and his loyal economic board follow quickly. The view is from…0
  5. 5Anthem (1936)Anthem (1936) 7.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1936A short, fierce fable that makes the individualist case against collectivism. Equality 7-2521, a street sweeper in a society where thinking for oneself is outlawed, rediscovers electricity in a forgotten tunnel and, later, the forbidden word that the whole state exists to suppress: "I". Ayn Rand's…0
  6. 6Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) 8.6/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1949The book that gave political argument its vocabulary: Big Brother, doublethink, Newspeak, the memory hole. Winston Smith rewrites old newspapers for the Ministry of Truth, and his small private rebellion exposes a state whose real aim is power over what people are able to think. Its central…0
  7. 7Player Piano (1952)Player Piano (1952) 7.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1952Kurt Vonnegut's first novel is the most useful dystopia for anyone thinking about automation now. In Ilium, New York, machines have replaced most human labor, and a class of engineers and managers runs everything efficiently, while everyone else is left comfortable, useless and resentful. Paul…0
  8. 8Fahrenheit 451 (1953)Fahrenheit 451 (1953) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1953Firemen here start fires: books are outlawed and burned wherever they are found. What keeps the novel arguable is that the state is pushing at an open door. Guy Montag's world gave up reading largely by choice, preferring wall-sized screens, speed and constant noise, and the censors simply finished…0
  9. 9The Man in the High Castle (1962)The Man in the High Castle (1962) 7.1/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1962Fifteen years after the Axis powers won World War II, the United States is divided between Japanese and German rule, and Americans have adjusted with unnerving ease. Philip K. Dick follows a handful of ordinary people, an antiques dealer and a jewelry maker among them, rather than leaders, which is…0
  10. 10A Clockwork Orange (1962)A Clockwork Orange (1962) 8.1/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1962Alex, a teenage thug narrating in invented slang, is reformed by the state through the Ludovico Technique: an injection plus forced viewing of violent films until even the thought of violence makes him ill. The government is delighted with the result. Burgess's question is whether goodness that…0