Ten of the strangest sci-fi dystopias

Lincoln Michel is the author of the story collection Upright Beasts, which was named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed and reviewed in the New York Times; Vanity Fair; O, The Oprah Magazine; Tor.com and elsewhere. His fiction and poetry appear in The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, Strange Horizons, Vice's Motherboard, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His essays and criticism have been published by The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian.

Michel's science fiction thriller debut is The Body Scout.

At Publishers Weekly Michel tagged ten of his "favorite strange dystopian novels," including:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

When one thinks about Margaret Atwood and dystopias, The Handmaid’s Tale is what comes to mind. And justifiably. But if we’re talking strange dystopias, then I have to plug her brilliant novel Oryx and Crake, which opens the MaddAddam trilogy. The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where bizarre lab-created humanoids with blue butts move around the ruins of a plague-ravaged world. Much of the plot takes place in flashbacks to the time before the apocalypse, when corporations with whimsical names like Anooyoo and RejoovenEsense pacified the “plebs” with innovations like ultra-Viagra pills and transplantable organs grown inside hybrid pig creatures named “pigoons.” (In my novel, the government’s frog/eagle “freagles” are a little homage to Atwood.) The main character, Jimmy, must survive in the ruins of the world while his memories slowly reveal how he and his friends Crake and Oryx helped turn the dystopia into an apocalypse.

Read about another entry on the list.

Oryx and Crake is among Kerstin Hall's five books featuring terrible monsters that tug on our human heartstrings, Ezekiel Boone's top five classic novels about when technology betrays us, Jeff Somers's six books in which the internet helps destroy the world, Chuck Wendig's five books that prove mankind shouldn’t play with technology, S.J. Watson's six best books, James Dawson’s list of ten ways in which writers have established barriers to love just for the sake of a great story, Torie Bosch's top twelve great pandemic novels, Annalee Newitz's top ten works of fiction that might change the way you look at nature and Liz Jensen's top ten environmental disaster stories.

--Marshal Zeringue