Even though I am giving this book a high rating, I want to warn everyone that it may not be palatable in light of the recent election. I actually started reading it in late November, but was still too traumatized by Trump’s winning the Presidency that I had to set it aside after a few chapters. Sometimes I’m in the mood for dystopian fiction, but I usually prefer authors who write about plausible futures, not vampire or alien invasion futures. (Stephen King’s The Stand being a […]
How should we live when the world is dying?
The Children of Men is a work of dystopian fiction with religious overtones. PD James steps out of her usual realm of detective novels/mysteries to ponder what happens to relationships (among people, between people and government, between individuals and God) when the end of the world is immanent. In 2021, it has already been 35 years since the last live human birth. For reasons that science has not been able to explain, humans worldwide have been unable to reproduce; they are simply no longer fertile. […]
Big Brother is Watching
Author Basma Abdel Aziz was recently featured in a New York Times piece about Middle Eastern authors who are writing dystopian fiction. Aziz is a psychiatrist who counsels torture victims, and it seems that both her profession and her experience of the Arab Spring have informed her storytelling. Aziz has been compared to both Orwell and Kafka for reasons that will be obvious to readers of The Queue. This novel features an unnamed Middle Eastern city that has experienced political turmoil and rioting and is now ruled […]
Hey, you got 80’s nostalgia in my dystopian novel. No, you got dystopian novel in my 80’s nostalgia.
And, if you get my title reference, then you are the target audience for this novel, which is a fun read so chock full of 80’s references that it made my teeth ache. It’s a great set-up. It’s the year 2044 and teenager, Wade Watts, lives in the future version of a trailer park (only imagine all the trailers stacked on top of each other), trying to stay out of the way of his abusive aunt, who would love to sell his computer to buy […]
A new look at The Girl on Fire
By now, I’ve read The Hunger Games several times, but this time, I got to teach it. When I was assigned to teach the same English Composition II course that I’ve taught the last four years in a row, I was initially disappointed. I had been hoping to test out a new survey course. I consoled myself by deciding to teach a new book, and with a theme of social justice and storytelling, I landed on The Hunger Games. Most of my students were pretty […]
The future is dystopian and full of idiots
Pajiban’s might have seen the trailer for the new Tom Hiddleston/Jeremy Irons movie based on this book which looks pretty great. It’s full of gorgeously brutalist architecture and stylised sets and cinematography that hint at the original time period of the book (the mid 70’s). My advice, maybe just watch the movie and skip the book? First up, I’m going to tell you that a bunch of dogs get killed and/or eaten in this book. That is a total deal breaker for me and if I’d […]
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