Best Dystopian Books

It's in this spirit that we assembled a group of readers to put together a list of some of the greatest works of dystopian literature, as part of Vulture's Dark Futures week. We received guidance from Jenny C. Mann and Ursula K. Heise, professors of English at Cornell and UCLA, respectively, both of whom study dystopian literature, and limited our selections to books with some connection to Earth. Beyond that, the sky was the limit. There are some familiar faces, but we also wanted to pluck from unexpected corners: You'll find literary fiction, young-adult works, graphic novels, realist tomes, some books written long ago, and others published in just the last few years. We skew toward the recent, as the term wasn't even invented until the 19th century and has only in the last half-century or so come into vogue.