The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Giver is worth a read if you can get past the third grade vocabulary.

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The Road is classified as post-apocalyptic fiction. Dystopian fiction focuses on a corrupt/flawed societal structure. It's a dystopia in definition, but not in genre.

Also, The Handmaid's Tale.

Personally, I belive dystopian fiction is best represented through short fiction. Animal Farm/Harrison Bergeron/Omelas.

ghost in the shell
akira

Farenheiht 451
Brave new world
1984

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it's foolish to speak of a special dystopian genre - is every novel with a social theme dystopian? Or every single one which doesn't name any (real) place and time? Is the Wizard of Oz dystopian? Or the eleventh Voyage of Ijon Tichy? the Spaceship of the Odyssee 2001? Is Glupsk of Saltykov-Schedrin? Is the town N of every second Russian (and Yiddish) satyrician since Nikolay Gogol? Is Krähwinkel of every second German (and Czech) satyrician since Jean Paul? Is the town of Danzig of Günther Grass a real place or a dystopia?

This term is artificial; it is the product of an imperfect school system tailored by fools to force disinterested children to compare Orwell and Huxley to Fahrenheit 451.

Snobs that grow out of this system will also pull, of all Russian Futurist writers, Zamyatin into this dystopian pot because they know Huxley was accused of Zamyatin plagiarism by Orwell. What they don't know is that Zamyatin's novel was not one-of-a-kind but the only such novel known to this English writer. He could as well have compared BNW to the Envy of Olesha or, say, to the Bedbug by Vladimir Mayakovsky :).

>>16532
You have never read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Also, of course all genres, categories, and classifications are artificial constructs of language. Do you fully understand the function of language? Because I'm not certain that you do.

The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien. It's uh..

Weird.

>>16533
Here we call it the "wizard of emerald city"; it is an allegory with workers,peasants and soldiers, dorothy being their revolutionary vanguard, working together to overcome local witch-oligarchs only to understand
"qu'il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni wizard, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun"
the flying monkeys are the whole state machinery; the green glasses on padlocks are the wizard's ideology, the illusory happiness which got to be done with as the first requirement to get any closer to the real thing.
Now, If it is an "dystopia" - Why not? To me the word is meaningless, as if it was created artificially to groom the ego of the arrogant halfwits who read lots of stuff without ever understanding a thing; to groom the snobbish students of the artes liberales.
1984 was written by some CIA bloke (google "Orwell's List") to justify an equality sign between Hitler and Stalin and to explain them British intellectuals how, under socialism, whiskey tastes like nitroglycerin and how they'll need a black market for such basic things as razors.
Now, Huxley's "brave new world" or, say, Olesha's "envy" is something completely different: It's an intellectual's whine over the realisation he's got no place in a world ruled by another class, by the technocrats or by the businessfolk - by the modern mandarins; "their world would lack this certain je-ne-sais-quoi!"
a handmaid's tale is a reflection on the field of reproduction; the ghost in the shell is a modern retelling of Hoffmann's Sandman; Akira's just awesome! animal farm is a hamfisted defence of cute piggy Trotsky - now... what's a "dystopia"? nonsense I say.

>>16545
Harry Potter is an allegory with a slave class, aristocratic elite, and an old regime. Harry is the symbol of the revolutionary new order overcoming...
Star Wars is a religious Allegory where Obi-Wan, a christ figure who rises again through the divine power of the force, guides his disciple...

I also saw a student once turn a Robert Frost poem into an embodiment of his pubescent sexual obsession. These are all examples of someone reading into a story what they want to believe.

You're not actually substantiating anything. You're just trying to 'win' an argument because you have some personal bitterness towards 'students of liberal arts.' All categories are artificial. That is the nature of categories, and it's your only real point. Argue against categories all you'd like. We'll all just sit back, enjoy the show, and laugh at your argument pro ignorance.

>>16549
>Harry Potter is an allegory with a slave class, aristocratic elite, and an old regime. Harry is the symbol of the revolutionary new order overcoming...
...he who shall not be named. Indeed; it's pretty good and probably also a dystopia.
>Star Wars is a religious Allegory where Obi-Wan, a christ figure who rises again through the divine power of the force, guides his disciple...
Primarily it's a dystopia.
>You're not actually substantiating anything.
You must have missed two posts of mine.
>You're just trying to 'win' an argument because you have some personal bitterness towards 'students of liberal arts.[...]'We'll all just sit back, enjoy the show, and laugh at your argument pro ignorance.
That's what I'm saying. They know nothing and are all extremely arrogant which is why it is such are a great business to staff huge buildings with an army of professional flatterers calling it something like 'an education'. I'm actually waiting for a definition of this your 'dystopia' other from the one I've already given. If you(take that one in pluralis majestatis if you will) are taking it personal, if you're trying to 'win' anything you have already 'lost'. Shouting it is an argumentum ad baculum, verencundiam and ignorantiam (like a living renaissance satire on a scholar) isn't bringing us anywhere either. Moreover it doesn't sound smart.
>All categories are artificial. That is the nature of categories, and it's your only real point. Argue against categories all you'd like.
Some categories are fine and nescessary. Animal Farm, for instance, is an allegory about the Russian revolution written by a Trotsky fanboy. It's nothing else.
And if Zoology wasn't a science, but an art sold to aspiring wives, it would probably have taken the taxonomy from that Chinese encyclopaedia with "animals that belong to the emperor", "animals that do look like flies from afar", "animals that are many", "animals who have broken a vase" etc., because these much more easy and beautiful than those we have now but the girls wouldn't be able to work in a veterinary clinic or in a zoo; they'd just be able to discuss their arbitrary shite on coffee klatsch, in blogs and in pretentious columns sold together with paper news.
If you want to write decent and relevant stuff I'd say you should drop the arbitrary shite from your head :)

>>16553
>That's what I'm saying. They know nothing and are all extremely arrogant...
Yes. Your arguments are wholly based on the invalidity of this category and are completely unbiased by some personal grudge. I believe it.

>>16555
What do we have here, a new Voltaire? Define the word now, homme des lettres!

>>16559
Don't argue over a word you don't know the definition of.

>>16563
Mine says "Highschool curriculum, BNW, 1984,F411"

>>16568
Yes. You are angry at high school. Understood.

nominating a classic dystopian short story

http://manybooks.net/titles/forstereother07machine_stops.html

and a classic novel by HG Wells

http://manybooks.net/titles/wellshgetext92timem11.html

Try "At Swim-two-birds"

There is an interesting argument to be made that the Arthurian Legends are post-apocalyptic dystopian narratives. After the Romans pulled out of England, they left behind cities with advanced plumbing, great roads, defensive walls, and up-t0-date naval ports. No people who were left behind, however, knew how to maintain any of this stuff. As the pipes stopped working the bath houses and barbarians overran the roads, the economy collapsed and the land fell into chaos. The plantations which had previously produced cash crops began instead producing their own foodstuffs and training their personnel for self-sufficiency. This was the genesis of feudalism in Middle Age Europe. Since no one could field huge armies anymore, militias became centered around powerful single warriors with the best equipment, knights. Think Mad Max but substituting horses for motorcycles. Many warlords arose who attempted the reunite England under a single authority for several benefits like reduced in-fighting, better defense against invaders, and improved economics. Arthur Pendragon was the first of these warlords who actually achieved this goal.

Seen from this perspective, all of the Arthurian Legends seem quite different. For example, look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. As a simple fairy tale, Gawain confronts a knight who turns out to be an incarnation of nature, dying and being reborn every Spring. Gawain learns something about nature and becomes wiser for it. As a post-apocalyptic story, Gawain is idealistically trying to help Arthur rebuild the glory of the civilization that was lost. The Green Knight is really talking about the rise and falls of societies, telling Gawain that Camelot will achieve its goals but only to inevitably crash down again into anarchy. Instead of a story about rebirth, the moral is downright nihilistic.