Entertaining stories for smart readers.
Articles and lists about books, games, society and other topics relating to utopia and dystopia.
Welcome to the seventh year of annual updates to my list of The 110 Best Dystopian Novels. Starting from dozens of contenders, I narrowed the field to these four best dystopian books of 2022. Rankings are based on curated lists from The Guardian, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and more, suggestions from readers on Goodreads, and ratings on Goodreads … Read more
For the sixth year running, here is the annual update to my list of The 110 Best Dystopian Novels. These four best dystopian novels of 2021 were selected from dozens of contenders based on curated lists from The Guardian, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and more, suggestions from readers on Goodreads, and ratings on Goodreads and Amazon. To complement … Read more
After an especially dystopian year, it’s time for the annual update to my list of The 110 Best Dystopian Novels. Here is the best dystopian fiction of 2020* based on curated lists from Book Riot, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and more, suggestions from readers on Goodreads, and ratings on Goodreads and Amazon. To complement these rankings, I have … Read more
It’s time for my annual addendum to my roundup list of The 110 Best Dystopian Novels. Here are the best dystopian books of 2019 based on curated lists from Book Riot, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and more, suggestions from readers on Goodreads, and ratings on Goodreads and Amazon. To complement these rankings, I have created two pieces of … Read more
An article I wrote for The Curious Reader to celebrate the release of Margaret Atwood’s new novel The Testaments. Margaret Atwood did not launch the feminist dystopia genre. But by writing its most visible work, she helped bring the genre into the popular consciousness. From the post-World War II dystopian boom to the American feminist movement, Atwood drew on a … Read more
In my dystopian fiction novel Our Dried Voices, I imagine a future world in which humans have cured all diseases and live in a utopian society free from worries about cancer, infection and other ailments. It seems like the makings of an ideal world, but things are not as perfect as they seem. In this article published on the website … Read more
An article I wrote for The Curious Reader about the key elements in my dystopian novel Our Dried Voices and other classics in the genre. Thanks to a young adult boom and television and film adaptations, the dystopian genre is riding a comeback. Authors who write dystopian novels have a new audience eager for stories that play on modern anxieties and … Read more
George Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984 remains relevant even today, seventy years after its publication. We still use terms like “Big Brother” and “Thought Police” to refer to the threat of invasive government surveillance. But video game developer Osmotic Studios has turned these anxieties upside down with two installments of the game Orwell. In the first, you play a government agent … Read more
In 2016, I published a roundup list of The 110 Best Dystopian Novels. Of course, many new dystopian novels came out during the remainder of 2016 and in the two years since. In order to keep my list updated over time, I am releasing annual rankings of the best dystopian novels published each year. Here are the best dystopian novels … Read more
In early 2016, I published a roundup of The 110 Best Dystopian Novels. Of course, many new dystopian novels came out during the remainder of 2016 and throughout 2017. And more will continue to do so with each passing year. So to keep my list updated over time, here are the best dystopian novels of 2016 and 2017. The final rankings are … Read more