Global Dystopias

Meniscus

“'I felt no hunger but the habit of food struck me intensely. My nightgown was grubby and torn. My limbs were scraped, spotted with yellow bruises, but I felt no pain.” Short Story

  • Theo Costantino

What Used to Be Caracas

Years after an extinction event nearly wiped out humanity, a team of scientists search Venezuela for signs of life and evidence of what caused the tragedy. Short Story

  • Mike McClelland

Memoirs of an Imaginary Country

In a lost tale of Casanova, the citizens of a country at the center of the Earth must give up their home—and their women—to colonizers. Short Story

  • Maria Dahvana Headley

Adora

An aging AI researcher, alone with her robot companion, must make a difficult decision when the android begins to malfunction. Short Story

  • Sumudu Samarawickrama

Cannibal Acts

In the aftermath of a flu pandemic that kills most of the population, a survivor, barricaded in Alaska, remembers her life while contemplating a grisly choice. Short Story

  • Maureen F. McHugh

Athena Dreams of a Hollow Body

Once I learned of the existence of mothers, I decided to order one for myself.

  • JR Fenn

Sign up for our newsletter

The Reformatory

Stories are dangerous. They can get you killed.

  • Tananarive Due

Dulltopia

On the Dystopian Impulses of Slow Cinema

  • Mark Bould

Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans

We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s.

  • Henry Farrell

A Strategy for Ruination

An interview with China Miéville

  • China Miéville

Sky Veins of Potosí

A tale of forbidden love in an age when corporations have replaced government.

  • Jordy Rosenberg

Indefinitely

Life is for living, my dead mother said.

  • Lindsay R. Taylor

All the Places Without Windows

He will surprise her on the anniversary of the end.

  • Mike Jeffrey

My Last Client

“I wanted his body to begin and end elsewhere, at home, meaning his home, wherever that was, meaning even I, whose job was to include him, wanted him out.”

  • Kristen Gleason

History Is a Dystopia

A conversation with novelist Tananarive Due on writing the past—and a way out of it.

  • Tananarive Due

Sunflowers

Eventually, it became obvious that we didn’t have a mission. Or our mission, for what it’s worth, was the lack thereof.

  • Bryan Washington

Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue

“The intake process begins with dismantling her personal space, one mantle at a time.”

  • Charlie Jane Anders

Waving at Trains

Nalo Hopkinson on the politics of dystopia, writing from the Global South, and the enduring importance of black mermaids.

  • Nalo Hopkinson

Saving Orwell

He has been pressed into service of all sorts of causes, but the real Orwell remains unknown.

  • Peter Ross

To Map, to Warn, to Hope

Introducing Global Dystopias

  • Junot Díaz

Fashion Week: Central Occupied Territory

So the thing about the Death Squads is that their outfits are super cute.

  • Jason Baltazar

All Rights Reserved

Every word is Trademarked™, Restricted® or Copyrighted©. Why was this something to celebrate?

  • Gregory Scott Katsoulis

Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again

Junot Díaz talks with Atwood about The Handmaid’s Tale, political dystopias, and Drake.

  • Margaret Atwood
  • Junot Díaz

The Dystopia Next Door

A new generation of young Polish novelists has turned to dystopia to express Poland’s cultural and economic contradictions.

  • Marta Figlerowicz
trending_flat
Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe