Dystopian fiction

Margaret Atwood’s classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a chilling look at what happens when the patriarchy is allowed to rule the roost once and for all.

Offred remembers a time when she was happily married to a husband named Luke and was able to play with her daughter. A time where women weren’t considered chattel and were considered equals of men. Unfortunately, all that changed when the Republic of Gilead was created, and now Offred is a handmaid to the Commander. In this new society, women can only go out to the markets once a day and are considered a success if they are able to give birth to healthy children.

Reading The Handmaid’s Tale will leave you shuddering violently at the vision of such an awful dystopia, especially since there are so many extremely religious politicians out there today. This novel is a warning sign of what will happen should countries fail to keep a secure boundary between church and state.

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John Scalzi’s thriller novel Lock In takes place 15 years in the future where a mysterious virus is burning through the United States. While most of the sufferers get fever, headaches, and meningitis, one percent of the victims are “locked in,” meaning they’re fully awake but trapped inside their bodies, unable to move or speak.

After the virus takes hold of the President’s wife and daughter, a new technology’s developed that allows the victims to move around in a virtual reality environment and hijack the brains of non-sufferers. Although the new technology is supposed to be tightly regulated, there’s a shadowy villain who is dead set on using the virtual reality environment for his own nefarious purpose.

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Rhiannon Frater’s adult novel The First Days, the first book in the As the World Dies trilogy, revolves around two vastly different young women who must become friends in order to survive the zombie onslaught.

Katie, who manages to grab her dog, a gun, and steal a truck, meets Jenni while fleeing from her abusive husband who had turned into a zombie and was devouring their two children. The two become fast friends and watch each other’s backs as they fight zombies and meet up with other survivors, although there’s plenty of in-fighting as the refugees squabble amongst each other even as the walking dead close in around them from all sides.

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In Autumn Kalquist’s chilling novel The Legacy Code, humans have vacated Earth for over 300 years and the survivors are struggling to help their women give birth. Amongst the fleet, almost every colonist carries badly mangled genes that damage the unborn children; half of all the pregnancies wind up becoming miscarriages or being terminated.

When heroine Era Corinth is scheduled to undergo a test to see if her future child has the Defect, the ship she’s on mysteriously suffers a hull breach. Convinced that the incident was planned, Corinth decides to investigate and winds up going on a journey that reveals startling truths about not only the fleet, but also the real reason for the Defect and the search for a new Earth.

Unlike the usual popular dystopian novels that take place on Earth, Kalquist makes her readers ponder the real-life consequences of what will happen if humans continue to push civilization to the point of no return. The end result is a novel that’s extremely difficult to put down, especially since it forces readers to think about the more ethical implications of genetic tampering and human preservation. The Legacy Code is a spine-tingling glimpse of humanity’s dismal future if we insist on disrespecting Mother Earth and wantonly destroying our planet in the process.