Dystopian Science Fiction

Margaret Atwood's dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid's Tale, has become a modern classic - and now she brings the iconic story to a dramatic conclusion in this riveting sequel. More than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.

The auto age is defunct. Buicks, Chryslers, and Pontiacs disfigure the landscape. Vines sprout in Manhattan. Wolves are seen in downtown Cleveland. And psychiatrist, mental hospital outpatient, and inventor Dr. Tom More has created a miraculous instrument: the ontological lapsometer, a kind of stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he plans to cure mankind’s spiritual flu. But first, he must survive Moira, Lola, and Ellen - and discover why so many living people are actually dead.

iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different color every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of the counterculture generation.

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab, and soon, you'll be matched with your perfect partner - the one you're genetically made for. That's the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: Test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance, and love.

December is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve-year-old receives a life assignment determined by the Elders. Jonas watches his friend Fiona named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant Director of Recreation. But Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man, the man called only the Giver, he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world.

Emily, David, Mason, Lisa, and Mark head to the California coast to find a boat back to Canada. They all felt that it would be much easier and quicker to sail home rather than go over land with the others. They were wrong. The trek through the lawless city to get to the coast is only the first step. Hardship and loss await as the teens struggle to overcome both the challenge of the journey and threats from within. The trip home will change them all - for good or bad, as the stranded teens make for home by sea.

If society fell apart, could your family survive? Jim Powell thought he was ready. He was a regular guy who travelled a lot for work and hated every second he was away from his young family. But when ISIS operatives unleashed a coordinated attack on America’s infrastructure, his entire world shattered. The electrical grid collapsed, communication networks were damaged, critical bridges and dams were destroyed, and major fuel refineries have gone up in massive fiery clouds.

Fiona doesn't remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered - her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right wrist - a black oval with five marks on either side - that she doesn't remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. And she's right.

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will. Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father.

Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it.

The Forge School is the most prestigious arts school in the country. The secret to its success: every moment of the students' lives is televised as part of the insanely popular Forge Show, and the students' schedule includes twelve hours of induced sleep meant to enhance creativity. But when first-year student Rosie Sinclair skips her sleeping pill, she discovers there is something off about Forge. In fact, she suspects that there are sinister things going on deep below the reaches of the cameras in the school.

One choice can transform you - or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves - and herself - while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

In the mid-1870s, a violent spray of comets hits Earth, decimating cities, erasing shorelines, and changing the world's climate forever. And just as Earth's temperature dropped, so was civilization frozen in time. Instead of advancing technologically, humanity had to piece itself back together.... In the 21st century, boats still run on steam, messages arrive by telegraph, and the British Empire, with its capital now in Delhi, controls much of the world.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. George Orwell once wrote of a world where abuse of power begins with an abuse of language and a bastardization of truth. Some of today's most exciting voices in speculative fiction explore the ramifications of those ideas in Ignorance Is Strength.

As London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place, shelter to shelter, to a desolate island and back again. The story traces fear and wonder, as the baby's small fists grasp at the first colors he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.

Three weeks after the nation's power grid goes down, chaos reigns. Food supplies have dried up. Fuel is running low. And the bleak, brutal winter is relentless. Fall Creek has forged a shaky peace, but the cost for safety proves higher than some are willing to pay. The town is a powder keg waiting to explode. For Hannah, home is finally within reach. But it won't be anything like she expected....

Tally lives in a world where your 16th birthday brings aesthetic perfection: an operation that erases all your flaws, transforming you from an "Ugly" into a "Pretty". She is on the eve of this important event and cannot wait for her life to change. As well as guaranteeing supermodel looks, life as a Pretty seems to revolve around having a good time. But then she meets Shay, who is also 15 - but with a very different outlook on life.

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....