dystopias

An anthology of dystopian short stories, by such authors as Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Orson Scott Card, and Ursula K. Le Guin, amongst others.

Twelve-year-old Yolanda "Yoly" Ciceron toils with her sister Camila on a strawberry farm outside the city of Silo, which is a beacon of hope in a world ravaged by climate change. Her dreams of living there one day are shattered when her sister lets her know they can no longer afford the school's tuition. Desperate, Yoly accepts a scholarship from the mayor that requires her to put her life in danger on a mission to a weather-ravaged area. Yoly uncovers further unsavory secrets about Silo and works with Camila to bring autonomy to the outlying areas by saving the last remaining beehive.

Floundering novelist Patrick Hamlin comes to Hollywood hoping to oversee the adaptation of one of his novels into a movie, which, in turn, he hopes will revive his career and impress his family once again. However, once he gets to California he finds everything much worse than he imagined--environmental disasters and corporate greed abound, and it all seems to be connected to one new company peddling a brand of synthetic water. Intrigued and seeking answers, Patrick teams up with the unruly Cassidy Carter, one of the stars of his movie, to investigate what turns out to be a catastrophe waiting to happen.

"After a nearly fatal accident, the most talented employee at a prestigious death-prediction company forecasts his own death day and finds he is already dead"--.

In a dystopian future, Tris Prior must choose a faction in the war between world powers and their ideologies intensifies. Tris has a Divergence, an anomaly, that makes her outcast in society, but it may be the only thing that can save her and her loved ones.

When Tris and Tobias enact a daring plan to go outside of the fence, they hope for a simpler life but instead encounter new truths and sacrifices that must be made for the good of all.

"A scavenger robot wanders in the wasteland created by a war that has destroyed humanity in this evocative post-apocalyptic "robot western" from the critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, and noted film critic. It's been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI--One World Intelligence--the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality--their personality--for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world. One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories--and nearly unbearable guilt. Sea of Rust is both a harsh story of survival and an optimistic adventure. A vividly imagined portrayal of ultimate destruction and desperate tenacity, it boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, yet where a humanlike AI strives to find purpose among the ruins"--.

A satire of the Soviet Union in which the animals take over running a farm, but find their utopian state turning into a dictatorship.

Bernard Marx becomes a citizen in an utopian World-State where babies are born in laboratories, there is no violence, all citizens take drugs for depression, and contentment overrides the free will of the populace, and presents the social climate in 1958, and the threats against personal freedoms that seemed to be precursers to the novel's empty civilization.

"More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets.As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes."--Publisher description.