# Recommended readings please : Who is currently holding the flame for Orwell & Huxley?



## Cirrocumulus (May 21, 2012)

Recently I've finally read George Orwell's _1984_, and I'm left wanting more. I read Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_ some time ago, and both novels say a lot about the world at present. As relevant as they are however, there are certain aspects which are vexingly dated, such as the heavy influence on Freud. 

Who are the current writers of fiction who have something to say about the present-day world? I'm not necessarily looking for novels on a dystopian future, although that'd be ok. Any genre.


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## Chaeronia (May 28, 2012)

Much of the speculative stuff I read has incorporated dystopia as milieu and backdrop rather than as front-of-house theme. Of ones I've (re)read recently, China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, and Charles Stross's Rule 34 come to mind. Michael Marshall Smith's Spares, too. These novels take existing or nascent social structures, ideologies, and technologies and give them steroids, propel them to a heightened inevitability. But these hypered conceits are done for story and not, at least primarily, as allegory or warning. 

Ken MacLeod's Intrusion appears to buck that trend and be centrally concerned with the dystopian notion, but I've yet to read it.

And, in terms of sheer popularity, you can't ignore The Hunger Games.


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## LaughinJim (May 28, 2012)

I would recommend the works of William Gibson, not the steampunk which invokes nostalgia for the worlds of Jules Verne, but his other stuff. The earlier works (don't skip the very early short stories) contain a unique vision of hyper-technology and decaying society. The latests works, though somewhat different are of a speculative near present where technology and commercialism has made its continued, disturbing intrusions into the world of art.


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## Randyjoe (Jun 1, 2012)

Kurt Vonnegut's work has a lot of political themes. Hocus Pocus is one of his later books and is basically about the United States getting into debt and the resulting chaos (quite relevant).

Another Book you might like is the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressell. I couldn't finish it but it's a bleak description of Britain in the early 20th century.


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## Toadling (Jun 8, 2012)

You might consider 'Fahrenheit 451' by Bradbury if you haven't read it. 

Alternatively, wait another year or two and you may enjoy a work I am currently finishing, a perfectly dystopian novel with many themes and extrapolations based upon current events and recent history. 

xD

- Toadling


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## JimJanuary (Jun 21, 2012)

A lot of Philip K Dick deals with dystopian ideas, but he kind of died 30years ago so it's not so much current. However some of his stuff has been made into movies


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## ppsage (Jun 21, 2012)

Robinson's _Mars Trilogy _and Stephenson's _Anathem_ are both very good modern science fiction which earnestly explore socio-political ideas and the implications of current praxis. Both are unusually inclusive of disperate ideologies and neither is consumed by specific personal agenda (in my opinion.) They are both really long.


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## Paglia (Jul 31, 2012)

_A Clockwork Orange _(Anthony Burgess) might be a bit outdated, but the message on morality is certainly worth consideration.

Amy Tan's writing isn't sci-fi but it's very good.


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