Books

Title page from Gulliver's Travels
The title page from the original publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

The Irish satirist Jonathan Swift arguably invented the genre of dystopian literature in 1726 by publishing his monumental work Gulliver’s Travels. Since then, writers of all stripes have used the genre to explore the darker possibilities of their societies.

What follows is a short, but ever-expanding list, of fictional works within the genre. If you have a suggestion for the list, please post a comment below. Please be aware, though, that there is a distinction between dystopian literature and post-apocalyptic literature. While the two do often work hand-in-hand, one does not necessitate the other.

An Incomplete List of Dystopian Novels & Comic Books

  1. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, 1726
  2. Flatland by Edwin Abbott, 1884
  3. The Iron Heel by Jack London, 1908
  4. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1921
  5. The Trial by Franz Kafka, 1925
  6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932
  7. It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, 1935
  8. Anthem by Ayn Rand, 1938
  9. Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov, 1947
  10. 1984 by George Orwell, 1948
  11. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 1953
  12. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1962
  13. The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard, 1962
  14. Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, 1976
  15. The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter, 1977
  16. Neuromancer by William Gibson, 1984
  17. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1985
  18. The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, 1986
  19. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, 1987
  20. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, 1989
  21. The Children of Men by P. D. James, 1992
  22. Fatherland by Robert Harris, 1992
  23. The Giver by Lois Lowry, 1993
  24. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, 1993
  25. Blindness by José Saramago, 1995
  26. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, 1997
  27. Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkins, 1998
  28. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, 2000
  29. Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, 2002
  30. Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, 2002
  31. Jennifer Government by Max Barry, 2003
  32. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, 2004
  33. The City and the City by China Mieville, 2009
  34. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, 2009
  35. Patternmaster by Octavia Butler, 2012
  36. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemison, 2015
  37. Tokyo Ghost by Rick Remender, 2016
  38. Zero-K by Don DeLillo, 2016
  39. American War by Omar El Akkad, 2017
  40. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, 2018

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