It Can't Happen Here

The Testaments

Margaret Atwood2019

Three women—a high-ranking official, a young woman in Gilead, and a girl in Canada—recount the internal rot of a fundamentalist regime.

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Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

William S. Burroughs

A series of nonlinear vignettes follow a drug addict's hallucinations and travels. The prose is fragmented and satirical.

Same sardonic register, still dystopian

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Dhalgren

Samuel R. Delany1975

An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.

sardonic → dreamlike

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Valis

Philip K. Dick1981

A man experiences a beam of pink light that imparts vast information. The narrative explores his mental breakdown and search for God in California.

sardonic → meditative

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That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon

Kimberly Lemming2021

A spice trader saves a demon while intoxicated and joins his quest to kill a witch. The story features frequent sexual content and humor.

sardonic → playful

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The Stainless Steel Rat

Harry Harrison1961

A futuristic con man is caught by the Special Corps and forced to use his criminal skills to catch other lawbreakers.

sardonic → playful

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Fantasy Lover

Sherrilyn Kenyon2002

A Spartan warrior cursed to be a love-slave inside a book is summoned by a modern woman. She takes him into the world to live as a man.

sardonic → earnest

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Ready Player One

Ernest Cline2008

A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

sardonic → propulsive

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Red Rising

Pierce Brown2014

A laborer on Mars discovers his caste is being lied to and undergoes surgery to infiltrate the ruling elite. He joins a brutal war games academy.

sardonic → propulsive, still dystopian

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All Systems Red

Martha Wells2017

A self-aware security android hacks its own governor module to watch soap operas while protecting a team of scientists on a distant planet.

sardonic → wry

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Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino1972

Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

sardonic → meditative

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Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

sardonic → meditative

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Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

sardonic → playful

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The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood1985

In a totalitarian state with a plummeting birth rate, a woman is enslaved as a reproductive vessel. She records her daily life and memories.

sardonic → cold, still dystopian

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Watchmen

Alan Moore1986

Retired masked vigilantes investigate the murder of a former teammate. The story takes place in an alternate 1985 on the brink of nuclear war.

sardonic → bleak, still dystopian

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A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess1962

A teenage gang leader is imprisoned and subjected to state-mandated psychological conditioning. The story is told in a slang called Nadsat.

Same sardonic register, still dystopian

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