Favorite "negative Utopia" novel/story?

[derby378]

My wife also calls them dystopias - I kinda like that.

[Wat_Tyler]

1. Your wife is right. Dystopia is the proper term.

[Rjnerd]

2. John Brunner - The Sheep look up.

The William Gibson (neuromancer, burning chrome, etc) are also very good reads.

[eternalburn]

3. Stupid movie but......

...Demolition Man with Sly, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, and Denis Leary did have an interesting story line if you could wade through the stupidity, that is :)

The frightening bland "upper-world" seems more possible each and every day.

[On the Road]

4. I Liked Gattaca Very Much, and Brave New World is a Classic

However, I think my very favorite is Ozone by Paul Theroux.

[meegbear]

5. Metropolis

The grand-daddy of 'em all.

[no name no slogan]

6. Brave New World

It's a world that is supposedly perfect, yet it's still unbearable to the protagonist. I dunno if that's proper irony, but it seems close.

[DrGonzoLives]

7. Reality

n/t

[mhr]

8. Handmaids Tale - Watch Out DU Woman This Is Your Future

eom

[Kid_A]

9. "We", if only because of it's historical significance.

If it weren't for We, then we wouldn't have 1984 or Brave New World. Yet hardly anyone has even heard of Yevgeny Zamyatin, even though he led to the popularization of what is still one of the prevalent genres of science-fiction.

It's also a damn good book...

[derby378]

11. Must check it out

I first head of We back around 1983, but never really went looking for it because I figured it was only in Russian or maybe just unavailable. Now there's an English translation for sale on Amazon.com, and I may have to take the plunge and see what was in this guy's head.

I've learned a little about the society and its demand for absolute mathematical precision and rationality - reminds me of Greek society when Pythagoras refined geometry into a full-fledged mystery cult where "all is number" and everything could be described by ratios - until one of Pythagoras' students pointed out that the Divine Proportion or Golden Ratio was itself an irrational number and was possibly drowned in the Mediterranean for spilling the beans.

[Caution]

10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

And you *must* read the book. The movie left out the last chapter completely and screwed up the message pretty badly by doing so.

[Liberal Classic]

12. Brazil

Terry Gilliam.
Ducts.

[Metatron]

14. Yep, Brazil is my choice, too.

[derby378]

13. I thought about including LOGAN'S RUN...

It's a more altruistic and hedonistic dystopia; all for the glorification of the eternal youth, renewed constantly in the formality of Carousel. To steal a line from Cocoon: "We ain't gonna get any older, and we ain't gonna die."

The city, however, was inherently weak - a computer, not a human, ran the city, although it used Sandmen as law enforcement. But all it took to destroy the computer was a renegade Sandman who was strong-willed almost to the point of insanity. It will take something much stronger, much more collective to upheave the worlds of Zamyatin, Orwell, Huxley, etc.

[AngryAmish]

15. End of 'The Getaway" by Jim Thompson

And not the movies.