The Future Is Now: 40 of the Best Dystopian Novels

This isn’t just an amazing dystopian novel, it’s one of the best zombie novels out there. When a plague brings the undead to life, a young woman running from a painful past does whatever she can to survive.

In this disheartening age of book banning, now is a good time to read (or reread) this dystopian classic about the outlawing of books and the group responsible for removing contraband from homes.

And this prescient classic is set in a California of the 2020s where political and climate upheaval are destroying the world. From the chaos arises a young woman with supernatural empathic abilities who might be the salvation of the planet…or its end.

Widely considered one of the best dystopian novels for young adults, this mega-popular series starter is about a future of poverty and oppression. Children from the country’s 12 districts must compete in a battle to the death in order to gain vital supplies and attention for their districts.

And this is another dystopian novel featuring frightening creatures of mankind’s own making. When the test subjects of a secret experiment escape captivity, they bring about the end of civilization as people know it and turn the country into a horrifying wasteland.

When a superstorm hits New York City, the city’s most vulnerable are left behind to fend for themselves. The survivors form a community of sorts, bolstered by the appearance of mysterious street art.

This multi award-winning YA novel is set in a near future where people have lost the ability to dream, and it can only be restored by the bone marrow of Indigenous people, who are now hunted for it.

On an unnamed island, the letter “Z” falls from the town sign. Taking this as its own sign, the local government bans the use of the letter. As more letters fall from the sign and are also outlawed, those letters also disappear from the text of the novel, which is written in snail mail between cousins. It’s a brilliant delight.

In this classic middle grade novel, humanity lives in a world with very little light left. When that source begins to go out, a young girl thinks an ancient message holds the clue to saving the world from complete darkness.

In a future America, a second Civil War has divided the country and climate change has flooded much of the coastline. A young girl and her family are forced into a displacement camp after her father dies, where she is vulnerable to a group preaching resistance through violence.

And like P.D. James’s great classic Children of Men, this novel deals with human babies in the future. When children being born start exhibiting the characteristics of earliest man, sending the world into a panic, the government attempts to intervene in the lives of people who are expecting.

For more great novels about strange changes to humans, check out The Book of M by Peng Shepherd and Sip by Brian Allen Carr.

And this classic of science fiction and technology is still relevant today. It’s an award-winning look at the highs and lows — and dangers — of artificial intelligence and the future. Fun fact: Gibson coined the term “cyberspace.”

In what is surely going to be one of the best-loved modern dystopian novels, a young woman who doesn’t know if she wants to get married must decide if she will submit to the government’s tracking program of unwed women. If she doesn’t, she will be arrested as a witch.

In a prediction of future population growth, Harrison has penned a novel about a detective searching for a serial killer in a crowded city of millions, where people live in dwellings stacked high to the sky. This was the basis for the film Soylent Green (but you won’t find the line “Soylent Green is people” in this book).

After a deadly flu wipes out most of the population, a man and his dog attempt to survive the harsh, lonely conditions of the new world while trying to escape the notice of the violent packs of people who roam the lands looking for victims.

And in this sadly relevant recent dystopian novel, marginalized communities are hunted and incarcerated in work camps by a horrifying, violent group known as “The Boots.”

It seems impossible that the author of this wild story of post-apocalyptic England written in an invented language is also the author behind Bread and Jam for Frances and Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, but here we are.

In a book most of us probably had to read in school, authoritarian rule sweeps the land, and people are forced to submit to the technological whims of the new dictatorship.

It’s really a spoiler to explain why this classic is a work of dystopian fiction, so let’s just say it’s about three close friends who grow up together at a very special boarding school.

This is a modern classic of climate fiction. The first book starts with the world after cataclysmic events have ruined the surface. The Broken Earth trilogy won the Hugo Award for all three books in the series, making Jemisin the first author to do so.

In one of King’s most famous works, a virus kills most of the population. The survivors gather together in two factions, good and bad, and head west to stop the coming of a great evil.

And this classic of children’s literature is set in a supposed future utopia where everyone is cared for and obedient and doesn’t ask questions. But when one child receives the memories of humans’ past, he begins to question everything.

A young woman in New York City who is so bored with her job and isn’t aware that a deadly flu has broken out until she is one of the remaining uninfected people. She joins up with a group of holy rollers looking for more survivors, but she is harboring a secret that may put her in danger.

And this is probably the most beloved dystopian work of the 21st century. It’s about the survivors of a deadly flu who are located in pockets around the country and are trying to survive as best they can against dangers, both environmental and human, while holding on to the memories of the Before Times.

In this Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, a father and son make their way across an America that has been devastated from coast to coast by ash and fire, encountering friend and foe along the way. But is it really surviving if there’s nothing to live for?

This is the greatest science fiction novel of all time, in my opinion. Set in three parts, it tracks a future civilization, on a planet that has been destroyed by nuclear warfare. The residents are the offspring of the survivors, who rose up and killed all the intelligent people on the planet for creating — or having the ability to create — nuclear weapons. There’s now a group of monks who hold onto the sacred text of “Leibowtz” and try to survive. Widely considered one of the first, and best, works of apocalyptic fiction, this one will knock your brain’s socks off.

This is a recent stunner, told in stories set from the recent future to hundreds of years ahead. It all starts with a virus unleashed during an excavation, and in the aftermath, humans must learn how to care for the vast number of sick and dying people, first adults and then children.

In this powerful novel that is unfortunately all-too relevant, America of the future is a place where all citizens must swear loyalty to the country and no discussion or celebration of other cultures is allowed, under penalty of law.

The Memory Police rule over an an unnamed island, where common everyday items disappear from homes, and the memory of them from brains. In this police state, remembering the lost items could cost a citizen their life.

And in this exciting technological dystopia, a search engine has become a big influence in the world of politics, and the government parties are still wrestling one another for control.

In this thrilling start to a YA series, set 150 years in the future, two sisters in Nigeria fight for their lives in a world that has been all but destroyed by climate catastrophes and nuclear war.

This is one of the most accurate dystopian novels of the last several years. Released a year before the world faced Covid-19, it’s about a planet where a deadly virus has forced everyone to remain in their homes, and gatherings have been outlawed.

Shusterman has written a lot of fantastic dystopian YA novels, like Unwind, where kids can be “retired” by their parents. But this one, about a future state-sanctioned culling to keep population growth down, is definitely the best (and hopefully not prophetic).

This is a classic, and one of the first popular novels about nuclear war. It’s set in Australia in 1963 after World War III, where citizens await the inevitable radiation from the nuclear fallout to reach the country.

This is an excellent and wildly popular YA series about a future where martial law rules the land, with academies training new soldiers to uphold order, while rebel forces work to dismantle it.

This is a very light dystopian novel. It’s really a story about a young girl and the dissolution of her parents’ marriage, while outside their home, the world begins to change when the Earth’s rotation begins to slow down for unknown reasons.

And last but not least, this is a fantastic adventure about a future where a sleeping sickness has affected a lot of the population, bringing chaos, death, and destruction to the world.

For another great sleeping sickness novel, check out The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker.