Dystopian Novel:
Little Brother by Cory Doctrow (2008--384 pages)
When he ditches school one Friday
morning, 17-year-old Marcus is hoping
to get a head start on the Harajuku Fun
Madness clue. But after a terrorist
attack in San Francisco, he and his
friends are swept up in the extralegal
world of the Department of Homeland
Security. After questioning that
includes physical torture and
psychological stress, Marcus is
released, a marked man in a much
darker San Francisco: a city of constant
surveillance and civil-liberty forfeiture.
Encouraging hackers from around the
city, Marcus fights against the system
while falling for one hacker in
particular. (Booklist)
Dystopian Novel:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick
(1968—256 pages)
THE INSPIRATION FOR BLADERUNNER. . .
Grim and foreboding, even today it is a masterpiece ahead
of its time.
By 2021, the World War had killed millions, driving entire
species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet.
Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for
people who couldn't afford one, companies built incredibly
realistic simulacrae: horses, birds, cats, sheep. . .
They even built humans.
Emigrees to Mars received androids so sophisticated it was
impossible to tell them from true men or women. Fearful
of the havoc these artificial humans could wreak, the
government banned them from Earth. But when androids
didn't want to be identified, they just blended in.
Rick Deckard was an officially sanctioned bounty hunter
whose job was to find rogue androids, and to retire them.
But cornered, androids tended to fight back, with deadly
results.
"[Dick] sees all the sparkling and terrifying possibilities. . .
that other authors shy away from."
--Paul Williams
Rolling Stone
Dystopian Novel:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932—288 pages)
• "Community, Identity, Stability"
is the motto of Aldous Huxley's
utopian World State. Here
everyone consumes daily grams
of soma, to fight depression,
babies are born in laboratories,
and the most popular form of
entertainment is a "Feelie," a
movie that stimulates the senses
of sight, hearing, and touch.
Though there is no violence and
everyone is provided for,
Bernard Marx feels something is
missing and senses his
relationship with a young
women has the potential to be
much more than the confines of
their existence allow. (Amazon)
Dystopian Novel:
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005—304 pages)
• Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth were once
classmates at Hailsham, a private
school in the English countryside.
"You were brought into this world for
a purpose," advised Miss Lucy, one of
Hailsham's guardians, "and your
futures, all of them, have been
decided." The tightly knit trio
experienced love, loss, and betrayal
as they pondered their destinies...
The novel is narrated by Kathy, now
31 and a "carer," who recalls how
Hailsham students were "told and
not told" about their precarious
circumstances. (Why were their
writings and paintings so important?
And who was the mysterious
Madame who carted their creations
away?) (Booklist)
Dystopian Novel:
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (2008—288 pages)
• Seventeen-year-old Jenna Fox awakens after
more than a year in a coma to find herself in a
life—and a body—that she doesn't quite
recognize. Her parents tell her that she's been
in an accident, but much of her past identity
and current situation remain a mystery to her:
Why has her family abruptly moved from
Boston to California, leaving all of her personal
belongings behind? Why does her
grandmother react to her with such antipathy?
Why have her parents instructed her to make
sure not to tell anyone about the
circumstances of their move? And why can
Jenna recite whole passages of Thoreau's
Walden, but remember next to nothing of her
own past? As she watches family videos of her
childhood, strange memories begin to surface,
and she slowly realizes that a terrible secret is
being kept from her. (School Library Journal)
Dystopian Novel:
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult (2004—432 pages)
• Anna is not sick, but she might as well be.
By age thirteen, she has undergone
countless surgeries, transfusions, and
shots so that her older sister, Kate, can
somehow fight the leukemia that has
plagued her since childhood. The product
of preimplantation genetic diagnosis,
Anna was conceived as a bone marrow
match for Kate -- a life and a role that she
has never challenged...until now. Like
most teenagers, Anna is beginning to
question who she truly is. But unlike most
teenagers, she has always been defined in
terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a
decision that for most would be
unthinkable, a decision that will tear her
family apart and have perhaps fatal
consequences for the sister she loves.
•
(Amazon Summary)
Somewhat Dystopian Novel:
Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945—130 pages)
Due to Brevity, it must be paired with The Girls of Slender Means
• Power corrupts, but absolute power
corrupts absolutely-and this is vividly
and eloquently proved in Orwell's
short novel. "Animal Farm" is a simple
fable of great symbolic value, and as
Orwell himself explained: "it is the
history of a revolution that went
wrong". The novel can be seen as the
historical analysis of the causes of the
failure of communism, or as a mere
fairy-tale; in any case it tells a good
story that aims to prove that human
nature and diversity prevent people
from being equal and happy ,or at
least equally happy. (Anna Hassappi)
(Post-War) Novel:
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (1963—176 pages)
Due to length, must be read in conjunction with Animal Farm
•
•
It is, as the title indicates, a story about a group of girls-no less concerned with love and money than those in
Mary McCarthy's "group" and no less satirically
presented, but with how different a slant! These girls
were living in London in the spring of 1945, right after
the European victory, in a four-story Edwardian
mansion known as the May of Teck Club.
This building--converted long ago from a private
establishment to a home for "Ladies of Slender Means"
below the age of 30 who had to live away from their
families in order to "follow an Occupation"--was still
serving its purpose. Now decayed and shaky, its tall
shabby rooms and its long windows with their newly
replaced panes had a certain grandeur. Although the
girls sometimes damned it as a "hostel" in their darker
moods, they really rather liked it and enjoyed showing
their guests both the house and the garden behind
where a wartime bomb had burst, and where another-according to an aging spinster who had been in the
house at the time--lay unexploded. They liked the
guests to be told about this other bomb. It was always
good for a laugh. (Virgilia Peterson (NY Times))
War Novel:
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969—215 pages)
• Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic
Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us
to Billy Pilgrim, a man who
becomes unstuck in time after he
is abducted by aliens from the
planet Tralfamadore. In a plotscrambling display of virtuosity,
we follow Pilgrim simultaneously
through all phases of his life,
concentrating on his (and
Vonnegut's) shattering experience
as an American prisoner of war
who witnesses the firebombing of
Dresden. (Amazon)
War Book:
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940—480 Pages)
In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to
cover the civil war there for the North American
Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he
completed the greatest novel to emerge from
"the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The
story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the
International Brigades attached to an antifascist
guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of
loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the
tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of
Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his
superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his
brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his
unwillingness to believe in blind faith,
Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The
Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create
a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and
brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise.
War Book:
Sunrise over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers (2008—320 pages)
• Robin's parents aspire for him to go to
college, but following September 11, he
feels compelled to join the Army instead. By
early 2003, Robin has completed Basic
Training and is deployed to Iraq where he
becomes part of a Civil Affairs Unit charged
with building the trust of the Iraqi people to
minimize fighting. Civil Affairs soldiers are
often put into deadly situations to test the
waters, and Robin finds that the people in
his unit, who nickname him "Birdy," are the
only ones he can trust. Robin quickly learns
that the situation in Iraq will not be
resolved easily and that much of what is
happening there will never make the news.
Facing the horrors of war, Robin tries to
remain hopeful and comforting in his letters
to his family, never showing his fear or the
danger he actually faces. (Stephanie
Petruso)
War Book:
If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien (1973--224 pages)
• Before writing his award-winning
Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien
gave us this searing, intensely
personal account of his year as a
foot soldier in Vietnam. The author
takes us with him—to experience
combat from behind an
infantryman's rifle, to walk the
minefields of My Lai, to crawl into
the ghostly tunnels, and to explore
the ambiguities of manhood and
morality in a war gone terribly
wrong. (Barnes and Noble
Overview)
•
War Book:
Dispatches by Michael Herr (1978—278 pages)
Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches
became an immediate classic of war reportage
when it was published in 1977.
From its terrifying opening pages to its final
eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in
unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos
and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of
life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s
unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-today events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry,
rendering clarity from one of the most
incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our
time.
Dispatches is among the most blistering and
compassionate accounts of war in our literature.