Go to section 16.
Did you think the choices were terrible? they were.
Are you disappointed in where your choices have led you? Don't be. Other leaders have tried, and failed. The future is full of the same choices as the past. Nobody likes the choices, but civilization keeps moving.
Do you feel that you're at the beginning, again? You are. It's a circle. But there's always hope for change — hope that the circle becomes a spiral staircase.
Look, here, see this. A room, with a table. It's evening, or night. Look closely at the three people sitting around the table: John, Jane, their child. John smiles. He needs a shave, or perhaps he is bearded. Jane serves lasagna, or chicken casserole, as she tells her family about her day. The child is a girl, or a boy. The child sits in a highchair and gazes adoringly at John and Jane. After they eat, the parents take the child upstairs, singing a lullaby. It's been a good day.
Their world is radical, or traditional. They vote like responsible citizens, but they're more excited by the child learning to walk. The child grows up in revolution, or not, and marries a man, or a woman, or no one at all. S/he raises a family in Utopia/Dystopia or a world that is neither. When the apocalypse comes, s/he stays with the kids, who are grown up themselves and having a child. Despite the destruction, a baby is born.
You have a civilization.
FOR FURTHER READING compiled by ROSS E. LOCKHART
What follows is a selected bibliography of noteworthy Dystopian and Utopian fiction. Dystopia and Utopia are often considered to be opposing sides of a coin, but perhaps the two lie closer than one might at first suspect. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, for instance, may have ended badly for Winston Smith, but Inner Party loyalist O'Brien undoubtedly got a promotion for bringing such a dangerous radical as Smith to justice. Titles notable for their high literary value are marked with an asterisk.
To learn more about the stories in Brave New Worlds, visit the anthology's website at johnjosephadams.com/brave-new-worlds
Notable Dystopias:
Amis, Martin
Einstein's Monsters
Anderson, M. T.
Feed
Armstrong, Jon
Grey (et. seq.)
Asimov, Isaac
Pebble in the Sky
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale *
Oryx and Crake
the Year of the Flood
Auster, Paul
In the Country of Last things
Bacigalupi, Paolo
The Windup Girl *
Ship Breaker
Ballard, J. G.
Crash
Hello America
Barry, Max
Jennifer Government
Bates, Paul L.
Imprint
Dreamer
Beaton, Alistair
A Planet for the President
Beckett, Bernard
Genesis
Böll, Heinrich
My Melancholy Face
Boston, Bruce
The Guardener's Tale
Boyd, John
The Last Starship from Earth
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451 *
Brain, Marshall
Manna
Brooke, Keith
Genetopia
Brunner, John
The Jagged Orbit
The Sheep Look Up *
The Shockwave Rider
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward
Vriclass="underline" the Power of the Coming Race
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
The Wanting Seed
Burroughs, William S.
Blade Runner, a Movie (see also Nourse, Alan E.)
Butler, Octavia
Parable of the Sower *
Carbonneau, Louis
Barrier World
Cobb, William
A Spring of Souls
Cohen, Stuart Archer
The Army of the Republic
Collins, Suzanne
The Hunger Games (et. seq.)
Cowdrey, Albert E.
Crux
Crace, Jim
The Pesthouse
DeVita, James
The Silenced
DiChario, Nick
Valley of Day-Glo
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
The Man in the High Castle *
Disch, Thomas
The Genocides
334
Doctrow, Cory
Little Brother
Farmer, Philip José
Riders of the Purple Wage
Dayworld
Ferrigno, Robert
Prayers for the Assassin (et. seq.)
Fischer, Tibor
The Collector Collector
Fukui, Isamu
Truancy
Gibson, William
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Neuromancer *
Gray, Alasdair
Lanark: A Life in Four Books *
Grimes, Tom
City of God
Hairston, Andrea
Mindscape
Hall, Sarah
Daughters of the North
Harkaway, Nick
The Gone-Away World
Harris, Robert
Fatherland
Harrison, Harry
Make Room! Make Room! *
Herbert, Frank
Hellstrom's Hive
Hubbard, L. Ron
Final Blackout
Huxley, Aldous
Ape and Essence
Brave New World *
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Never Let Me Go
Johnston, Paul
The House of Dust
Keogh, Andrew
Twentytwelve
Keppel-Jones, Arthur M.
When Smuts Goes
Kerr, Philip
The Second Angel
King, Stephen (writing as Richard Bachman)
The Long Walk
The Running Man
Kuttner, Henry
The Iron Standard
Lamar, Jake
The Last Integrationist
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Lem, Stansiław
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Lerner, Lisa
Just Like Beauty
Levin, Ira
This Perfect Day
Lewis, Sinclair
It Can't Happen Here *
London, Jack
The Iron Heel *
Lowry, Lois
The Giver
Lundwall, Sam J.
2018 A. D. or the King Kong Blues
Mark, Jan
Useful Idiots
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road *
McCarthy, Wil
Bloom
McIntosh, Will
Soft Apocalypse