this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
77 points (98.7% liked)

Books

10265 readers
3 users here now

Book reader community.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm nearly finished rereading 1984 and my appetite for dystopian books is whetted. What are some other great ones I should check out?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Three good novels to see if you have a taste for cyberpunk: The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and Neuromancer by William Gibson. The first is lush and leisurely, the latter two are very lean and fast-paced.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I've read the Neal Stephenson books you mentioned and loved them but I wonder if they're really dystopian? Injustice is certainly a big part of those worlds but I don't find them as bleak and hopeless as some other truly dystopian novels I've read. He seems to explore how new technologies could completely change our societies, but they always feel like worlds that are on the cusp of something new (rather than allowing technology to back themselves into a corner with no hope of improvement).