# List of dystopian literature
Dystopian literature is fiction that depicts imagined societies of suffering, oppression, or collapse, written as a negative mirror of the utopian tradition that [Thomas More](https://www.edgepedia.org/thomas-more)'s *Utopia* (1516) founded[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia). This article lists the genre's principal works in rough chronological order and describes the subgenres into which critics and readers' guides sort them.
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Term origin | John Stuart Mill used "dystopia" in the House of Commons on 12 March 1868; twentieth-century critics also tried "anti-utopia," "negative utopia," and "cacotopia"[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia) |
| Shared root | Both utopia and dystopia derive from More's *Utopia* (1516); utopia means "no place" in Greek, dystopia a "bad place"[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia) |
| Founding modern work | Yevgeny Zamyatin's *We* (1924) is typically credited with redefining and popularizing the dystopian novel[2](https://theses.cz/id/c3hwtf/Bakalarska_prace_-_Filip_Turna.pdf) |
| Classic period | *Brave New World* (1932) and *Nineteen Eighty-Four* (1949) are generally considered the definitive dystopian novels of their era[3](https://thedystopiaindex.com/) |
| Scale of the field | One researched directory lists 293 dystopian works, sortable by subgenre, theme, decade, and author[3](https://thedystopiaindex.com/) |
| Largest subgenre | In that directory, totalitarian dystopias number 147 of 293 entries, ahead of young-adult dystopias (100) and post-apocalyptic works (69)[3](https://thedystopiaindex.com/) |
| Reference guide | M. Keith Booker's *Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide* (1994) summarizes dystopian theory and analyzes numerous novels, plays, and films[4](https://books.google.com/books/about/Dystopian_Literature.html?id=B_rtAAAAMAAJ) |
## What counts as a dystopia
A dystopia is a fictitious society presented as grim and oppressive, with the moralistic goal of preventing the horrors it illustrates[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia). It uses the machinery of utopia, such as social stability achieved through authoritarian regimentation, but reads that machinery pessimistically, challenging the assumption of human perfectibility[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia). By the end of the twentieth century, critics had largely stopped trying to segregate dystopia from science fiction, the larger genre to which it belongs[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia).
Classification is not mechanical. B. F. Skinner regarded his *Walden Two* as a utopia, yet many literary critics consider it a dystopia; elements that push a work toward the dystopian column include suspicion of scientific social planning, the unhappiness of the characters portrayed, and suspicion of behavioral methods of governance[5](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2733639/).
## Precursors and the founding works
Classical utopian fiction was customarily set in geographically far-away places; by the eighteenth century authors began setting their plots in a better time rather than a better place, a shift tied to the ideas of progress and modernity[6](https://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A1473117/FULLTEXT01.pdf). Dystopia inverted this forward-looking optimism. [E. M. Forster](https://www.edgepedia.org/e-m-forster)'s story *The Machine Stops* (1909) is described as an early example of the dystopian maps of social hells that have been with us ever since[2](https://theses.cz/id/c3hwtf/Bakalarska_prace_-_Filip_Turna.pdf).
**Zamyatin's *We*.** The redefinition and popularization of the dystopian novel is typically credited to [Yevgeny Zamyatin](https://www.edgepedia.org/yevgeny-zamyatin)'s *We* (1924) by academics including Tom Moylan and Philip Stoner, as well as by *Encyclopædia Britannica*[2](https://theses.cz/id/c3hwtf/Bakalarska_prace_-_Filip_Turna.pdf). Important precursors cited alongside it include [Jack London](https://www.edgepedia.org/jack-london)'s *The Iron Heel*, Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*, and [Ayn Rand](https://www.edgepedia.org/ayn-rand)'s *Anthem* (1938)[3](https://thedystopiaindex.com/).
## The classic totalitarian novels
The mid-twentieth-century canon is dominated by warnings against totalitarian rule, surveillance, and propaganda:
- **[Aldous Huxley](https://www.edgepedia.org/aldous-huxley), *Brave New World* (1932)**, generally considered, with Orwell's novel, one of the definitive dystopian novels of the era[3](https://thedystopiaindex.com/).
- **Katherine Burdekin, *Swastika Night* (1937)**, a feminist-press-reissued dystopia of Nazi rule[7](https://notts.rl.talis.com/lists/8CDD3837-5055-3115-8BE7-443343F52081/bibliography.html?style=apa).
- **[George Orwell](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-orwell), *Nineteen Eighty-Four* (1949)**, in which surveillance and propaganda control truth and freedom[8](https://libguides.cccua.edu/c.php?g=1524931&p=11420825).
- **[Ray Bradbury](https://www.edgepedia.org/ray-bradbury), *Fahrenheit 451***, which Kingsley Amis called "the most skilfully drawn of all science fiction's conformist hells"[9](https://www.ocr.org.uk/images/225775-candidate-style-answers-co2-comparative-textual-study.pdf).
- **Anthony Burgess, *A Clockwork Orange* (1962)**, listed among the era's works with a curious surreal quality[10](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dystopias).
The *Science Fiction Encyclopedia* entry also records a cluster of British and American works of the late 1940s and 1950s, including Aldous Huxley's *Ape and Essence* (1948), an anti-scientific polemic; [Evelyn Waugh](https://www.edgepedia.org/evelyn-waugh)'s *Love among the Ruins* (1953), a vitriolic political satire; Bernard Wolfe's *Limbo* (1952); [David Karp](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-karp)'s *One* (1953); and [L. P. Hartley](https://www.edgepedia.org/l-p-hartley)'s *Facial Justice* (1960)[10](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dystopias).
## Feminist and late-twentieth-century dystopias
**[Margaret Atwood](https://www.edgepedia.org/margaret-atwood)'s *The Handmaid's Tale* (1985)** is the period's most cited example. Atwood drew on biblical themes, Puritan history, and the Romanian dictator [Nicolae Ceaușescu](https://www.edgepedia.org/nicolae-ceausescu) to construct the social and political order of Gilead, producing a novel that was both a product of the political and cultural context of the 1980s and a critique of her own contemporary moment[11](https://works.swarthmore.edu/suhj/vol6/iss1/1/). The novel has remained a touchstone in efforts to raise awareness of reproductive issues and assert women's autonomy against a misogynistic state[11](https://works.swarthmore.edu/suhj/vol6/iss1/1/).
Other major works of the later twentieth century cataloged in library guides include [Philip K. Dick](https://www.edgepedia.org/philip-k-dick)'s *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?* (1968), which questions humanity in a world of artificial beings, and [Octavia E. Butler](https://www.edgepedia.org/octavia-e-butler)'s *Parable of the Sower*, in which climate and social collapse reshape society[8](https://libguides.cccua.edu/c.php?g=1524931&p=11420825).
## Young-adult dystopias
Until the 1960s, dystopia was not written for teenagers. The shift came notably with the Tripod series by Christopher Samuel Youd; books like *Nineteen Eighty-Four* and *Brave New World* were seen as classics of grown-up literature, and during the following fifty years their analogs were usually meant for teenagers[12](https://time.com/3596139/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-young-adult/). The genre changed further as coed dystopias brought romance into the resistance plot, and a tradition of strong female characters in young-adult fiction, associated with writers such as Madeleine L'Engle, Judy Blume, and Anne McCaffrey, fed into works like Suzanne Collins's *The Hunger Games* (2008)[12](https://time.com/3596139/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-young-adult/). Library guides list *The Giver* by Lois Lowry (1993), *The Hunger Games*, and *Divergent* by Veronica Roth (2011) among the major young-adult entries[8](https://libguides.cccua.edu/c.php?g=1524931&p=11420825).
## Subgenres and the shape of the list
A researched directory of dystopian works sorts the field into subgenres with the following counts: totalitarian (147), young-adult dystopia (100), post-apocalyptic (69), social satire (29), corporate dystopia (21), techno-dystopia (19), biopunk (12), cyberpunk-adjacent (9), feminist dystopia (8), surveillance state (7), and climate and cli-fi (4)[3](https://thedystopiaindex.com/). The dominance of totalitarian settings reflects the genre's twentieth-century core, while the young-adult and post-apocalyptic categories show where most newer entries have clustered.
Recent decades have also produced post-apocalyptic literary fiction that shades into the dystopian, such as Emily St. John Mandel's *Station Eleven*, in which art and memory survive after a global collapse, and Cormac McCarthy's *The Road*, a bleak journey through a devastated world[8](https://libguides.cccua.edu/c.php?g=1524931&p=11420825). Contemporary Booker-linked dystopian fiction extends the list with works such as Mohsin Hamid's migration dystopia and Howard Jacobson's social satire[13](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/the-booker-prize-guide-to-dystopian-fiction).
## Scholarship
The scholarly literature on the list is substantial. Gregory Claeys, Professor of the History of Political Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, edited *The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature*, which surveys the field from More's *Utopia* to what it calls today's dark and despairing tendency toward dystopian pessimism, epitomized by *Nineteen Eighty-Four* and *The Handmaid's Tale*[14](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/86659/frontmatter/9780521886659_frontmatter.htm). His monograph *Dystopia: A Natural History* is the first devoted to the concept of dystopia, taking the term to cover both a literary tradition of satirical works, mostly on totalitarianism, and real despotisms and societies in disastrous collapse[15](https://academic.oup.com/book/6186). Earlier landmark studies include Chad Walsh's *From Utopia to Nightmare* (1962) and Mark R. Hillegas's *The Future as Nightmare* (1967)[10](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dystopias), and Booker's 1994 guide remains a standard overview of dystopian theory and individual works[4](https://books.google.com/books/about/Dystopian_Literature.html?id=B_rtAAAAMAAJ).
## References
1. [Dystopia, Encyclopedia.com (from the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas)](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia)
2. [Filip Turna, Development of Dystopian Science Fiction as a Literary Genre (bachelor's thesis)](https://theses.cz/id/c3hwtf/Bakalarska_prace_-_Filip_Turna.pdf)
3. [The Dystopia Index](https://thedystopiaindex.com/)
4. [M. Keith Booker, Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide, Google Books](https://books.google.com/books/about/Dystopian_Literature.html?id=B_rtAAAAMAAJ)
5. [Discriminating utopian from dystopian literature: Why is Walden Two considered a dystopia? PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2733639/)
6. [Brief historical background of the dystopian genre, DiVA portal](https://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A1473117/FULLTEXT01.pdf)
7. [Bibliography for Q33387: Twentieth-Century Dystopias, University of Nottingham](https://notts.rl.talis.com/lists/8CDD3837-5055-3115-8BE7-443343F52081/bibliography.html?style=apa)
8. [Dystopian Literature: Major Works, Cossatot Community College LibGuide](https://libguides.cccua.edu/c.php?g=1524931&p=11420825)
9. [OCR A Level English Literature candidate style answers](https://www.ocr.org.uk/images/225775-candidate-style-answers-co2-comparative-textual-study.pdf)
10. [Dystopias, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE)](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dystopias)
11. [Celeste Deale, When Dystopia Becomes Political Criticism: Why Margaret Atwood Wrote The Handmaid's Tale, Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal](https://works.swarthmore.edu/suhj/vol6/iss1/1/)
12. [How a 1960s Literary Trend Brought Us The Hunger Games, TIME](https://time.com/3596139/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-young-adult/)
13. [The best dystopian novels and works of fiction, The Booker Prizes](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/the-booker-prize-guide-to-dystopian-fiction)
14. [The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, frontmatter, Cambridge University Press](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/86659/frontmatter/9780521886659_frontmatter.htm)
15. [Gregory Claeys, Dystopia: A Natural History, Oxford Academic](https://academic.oup.com/book/6186)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Genre fiction categories › Historical, war, and setting-based fiction › Novels set in future, post-apocalyptic, and speculative Earth*
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