I started this year by taking a step back from the Dabbler in order to focus on other projects. Now that I’ve finished school and found paid writing work, it’s time to get back into it. From now on I’ll be posting twice a week, every Monday and Wednesday. Wednesdays will alternate between author interviews–I have a full schedule this summer–and posts I write about various topics, starting with today’s: 3 of the best dystopian novels I’ve ever read.
1. Post-Apoc — The most recent novel on this list, Post-Apoc follows a teenage girl trying to survive in Toronto after civilization’s collapse. Written in first person with a stream of consciousness feel to it, Post-Apoc is an in depth look at the years following the end of the world everyone seems so preoccupied with these days. From what it’s like to suddenly live without modern medicine, to what happens when the survivors run out of booze, you see every aspect of life after civilization fails.
The thing I liked most about Post-Apoc–other than being set in Toronto–was that it focused on an ordinary girl just trying to survive. Most books around the apocalypse focus on either the catalyst for change or the creation of a new civilization centuries later. More importantly, the first person narrative and detailed, accurate descriptions of deserted Toronto make this book so real your skin will crawl.
If you’d like to read Post-Apoc, order it from Amazon today!
2. 1984 by George Orwell — There’s a good chance you already read this novel in your high school English class, but no conversation of great dystopian fiction would be complete without mentioning it. Following its main character through Oceania, a country that feels like a cross between Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and North Korea, this book shows a terrifying potential future.
The book ends with a detailed explanation of how this society works–and why it will always work. It shows what made history’s greatest empires fall, and how Oceania will withstand centuries to come.
This novel left a deep impact on me, particularly because I read it while also studying Nazi Germany for a different high school class. The similarities were overwhelming, and I thought a lot about how our own society might turn into that. More than anything, this book is a great reminder why free speech is so important.
If you’d like to purchase your own copy of 1984 for some interesting reading, you can order it from Amazon today.
3. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau — I got my copy of this book about twelve years ago and loved it for much more than its shiny cover–though as a child who loved books, I found that amusing too.
Ember is a city build underground to save humanity from some great catastrophe, possibly nuclear war. Three hundred years later, the city is falling apart, the power generators are dying, food is running out. It falls to two twelve-year-olds, a boy and a girl, to save their city–or to get their people out before it collapses.
The City of Ember might have been the first dystopian novel I ever read. The book impacted me deeply in many ways, making me think differently about society and technology. To be honest, I’m not sure what part impacted me the most–what I do know is that The City of Ember is one story I will always care with me.
You can order your copy from Amazon today if you want to read some quality dystopian fiction.
Have you read any great dystopian fiction? Tell me about it in the comments below!
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison is a good one. There’s a movie that claims to be based on it, but they’re so different it might as well not be. It takes place in a severely overpopulated New York City, where shortages of both food and water are a major concern. It takes place in a year that was the future when it was written but has now passed.