Dystopian Literary Fiction

Say you're a time traveler and you've already toured the entirety of human history. After a while, the outside world might lose a little of its luster. That's why this time traveler celebrates his birthday partying with himself. Every year, he travels to an abandoned hotel in New York City in 2071, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and drinks 12-year-old Scotch (lots of it) with all the other versions of who he has been and who he will be.

Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda - four terminally ill patients - have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves - without a single imperfection. Blemishes, scars, freckles, and wrinkles have all disappeared; their fingerprints are different; their vision is impeccable; and, most importantly, their illnesses have been cured.

The Resistance still fights the invaders, but they are nothing more than an annoyance to the Illyri, an alien race of superior technology and military strength. When caught, the young rebels are conscripted. Part soldiers, part hostages, they join the Brigades, sent to fight at the edges of the growing Illyri Empire.

Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, succumbed before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her. He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness. Chase and Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family.

The America of 2037 is a country distracted by, infatuated with, and addicted to Arcadia. The brainchild of reclusive genius Juan Diego Reyes, Arcadia is a wickedly immersive, all-encompassing social-media platform and virtual-reality interface. Although Arcadia has made the Reyes family fabulously wealthy, it's left them - and the rest of the country - impoverished of that rare currency: intimacy.

When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn't have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son - a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.

Ten long years have passed since war first broke out, and one couple still does not know the whereabouts of their children, or what their country is even fighting for. They follow orders and their lives go by simply, routinely, until one day, mute boy walks onto their property. When the authorities announce that the area needs to be evacuated and that everyone must relocate to the transparent city, the three leave together.

The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavor. The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives. The Divers’ Game is a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth: we must change or our world will collapse. What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture?

What's left of the world is divided between the highly regimented life of those inside dome-cities that are protected from natural light (and natural shadows), and those forced to the dangerous, hardscrabble life in the wilds outside. In rural Texas, Mira, her shadow-addicted friend Murk, and an ex-Domer named Bale search for a possible mythological cure to the shadow sickness - but they must do so, it is said, before the return of Halley's Comet, which is only days away.

In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom.

Endland holds a broken mirror to England. In its garish but strangely familiar world of empty tower blocks, 24-hour cyber cafes, and bomb sites, a motley collection of misfits, wanderers and charmed drunks do their best to survive. Nothing is stable in Endland, and what's more, the gods have started drinking at lunchtime, which can lead only to trouble.

Lionel Bigman is dead. Murdered by a robot. Guy Matthias, the philandering founder and CEO of the mega-corporation Beetle, insists it was human error. But was it? Either the predictive algorithms of Beetle's supposedly omniscient "lifechain" don't work, or, they've been hacked. Both scenarios are impossible to imagine and signal the end of Beetle's technotopia and life as we know it.

Six years after a virus wiped out most of the planet’s population, former pop star Moira is living under a new identity to escape her past. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world for those still too traumatized to go outside, but she never reaches out on her own behalf. Rob has tried to protect his daughter, Sunny, by keeping a heartbreaking secret, but when strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again.

Lea Kirino is a “Lifer”, which means that a roll of the genetic dice has given her the potential to live forever - if she does everything right. And Lea is an overachiever. She’s a successful trader on the New York exchange - where instead of stocks, human organs are now bought and sold - she has a beautiful apartment, and a fiancé who rivals her in genetic perfection. And with the right balance of HealthTech™, rigorous juicing, and low-impact exercise, she might never die. But Lea’s perfect life is turned upside down when she spots her estranged father on a crowded sidewalk.

Twins Virginia and Tommy Matthews have been on their own since they were orphaned at the age of five, surviving a merciless foster care system by relying on each other. Twelve years later, the world begins to collapse around them as a deadly contagion steadily wipes out entire populations and a devastating world war rages on for the cure. When Tommy is drafted for the war, the twins are faced with a choice: stay and accept their fate of almost certain death or run. Virginia and Tommy flee into the dark night.

After months of disturbing behavior, Gardner Quinn has vanished. Her older sister Fredericka is desperate to find her, but Fred is also pregnant - miraculously so, in a near-future America struggling with infertility. So she entrusts the job to their brother, Carter. Carter, young but jaded, is in need of an assignment. Just home from war, his search for his sister is a welcome distraction from mysterious physical symptoms he can’t ignore...and his slightly-more-than recreational drinking. Carter’s efforts to find Gardner lead him into a dangerous underground.

Three years ago, the sun began to die. In a desperate attempt to reignite the failing star, the United States joined the rest of the planet in unloading its nuclear arsenal at the flickering ember. When they finally reach their target, it's 30 degrees in July and getting colder. Lisa and her husband, Guy, sit shivering on a South Carolina hilltop, watching as humanity's best hope at survival shimmers faintly...then disappears below the horizon. In a world with little light, nothing is guaranteed - least of all survival.

In einem fiktiven Staat in Nordamerika haben religiöse Fundamentalisten die totalitäre Republik Gilead errichtet. Nach einer atomaren Verseuchung ist ein großer Teil der weiblichen Bevölkerung unfruchtbar. Frauen werden entmündigt und in drei Gruppen eingeteilt: Ehefrauen von Führungskräften, Dienerinnen und Mägde. Letztere werden zur Fortpflanzung rekrutiert und sollen nach biblischem Vorbild für unfruchtbare Ehefrauen Kinder empfangen.

Oxford Street burned for three weeks; the Regent's Park camps have been bombed. Lalla, 16, has grown up sheltered from the new reality by her visionary father, Michael Paul. He has promised Lalla and her mother that they will escape. Escape on a ship big enough to save 500 people. Once onboard, as day follows identical day, Lalla's unease grows. Where are they going?

Wir schreiben das Jahr 2031: Staatsfeminismus, Mega-Hitzewellen, Wirbelstürme, Endzeitstimmung und ein 50-jähriges Klassentreffen in der Hamburger Vorortkneipe "Ehrlich". Dank der Verjüngungspille Ephebo, der auch Sebastian Bürger sein gutes Aussehen verdankt, ein ganz besonderes Klassentreffen.