Dystopian Fiction

markyedison

Hi everyone,

Coolock Library is promoting works of utopian/ dystopian fiction during september and october.

Along with popular classics such as Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World & Burgess' A Clockwork Orange are works by Philip K.Dick, P.D.James, Franz Kafka, Thomas More, Will Self, H.G. Wells, Stephen King and James Kelman.

Also on display for september is a photographic exhibition of wall murals from Belfast and Derry.

Please come along if you're in the area and , if anyone has any suggestions for additions to the dystopian fiction collection, please post them here.

Thanks, Marky

eclectichoney

sounds like a great idea. you could maybe add We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

ZorbaTehZ

List of Dystopian Literature on Wikipedia

eclectichoney

Awbutthat takes the fun out of trying to think of them!

BenjAii

He won the Pulitzer prize this year for this. You could hardly get any more dystopian. It's one mans fight for survival and that of his son in a post-nuclear holocaust America. A few years into the nuclear winter and the few survivors that are left are mainly turning on each other cannabalistically as the last available food source. It's grim, grim, grim, almost everyone is your enemy and wants you for food or worse, but ultimately leavevened by it's story about the mans love for his son and his desperation that there might be somewhere left he can survive.

Ho-Hum

The Road is a fantastic book (if a little depressing), reccomend it to anyone looking for a good read.

markyedison

Thanks for the tips everyone.

I've taken the last copy of We for myself on your recommendation, eclectichoney, and The Road is now on the shelf too.

The wikipedia list was helpful too but as indicated the real fun is sharing ideas.:)


Thanks again, Marky

padsc

'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood is amazing. It's about a future when genetic engineering goes wrong.
Also by her, 'The Handmaid's Tale' where the future is a religious fundamentalist nightmare. Brilliant too.

Hivemind187

Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (which references many of the Classics, most noatably 1984).

Robert A Heinlein Starship Troopers (focusses heavily on the war but the subtle references to a fascistic military globo-state runs throughout).

William Gibson Nueromancer (ok, so he didnt know what he was talking about but you get the idea).

Dudess

Quite simply my favourite genre. I'll try to make it up there - thanks a million for the heads-up. What bus goes to Coolock? And it's on the Dart line isn't it? I've just bought The Road, can't wait to read it. Yes, Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale are two of the best books I've ever read. So is Nineteen Eighty Four obviously.
Jeanette Winterson (author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit) has recently had a dystopian novel published - The Stone Gods.
I had to do an essay in college on how the concepts of utopia and dystopia are explored in literature. I have never enjoyed doing an essay so much!
Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is another one.

markyedison

Hi dudess, thanks for the tips. Contacts details and bus routes for the library are here-http://www.dublincity.ie/living_in_the_city/libraries/find_your_library/coolock_library.asp. We're between Northside Shopping Centre and Colaiste Dhulaigh.

Cheers, Marky

Dudess

Brilliant stuff. Thanks Mark.

Dont be at yourself

Presumably The Man In The High Castle is the Philip K. Dick book, which is a very interesting book. Perhaps not as great as some of other other books in the genre, but definitely one to start a discussion!

Dudess

I tried it. Couldn't get into it though. Must give it another shot.
Other Philip K. Dick works that would be appropriate are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (on which Blade Runner is based) and Minority Report.