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🧲 Books like this

The Water Knife

Paolo Bacigalupi · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler · 299 pages

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future. Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been d

Climate ChangeEnvironmental CollapseNear FutureDystopian
❤️

The Kill Order

James Dashner · 384 pages

Before WICKED was formed, before the Glade was built, before Thomas entered the Maze, sun flares hit the earth, killing most of the population. Mark and Trina were there when it happened. They survived. But now a virus is spreading. A virus that fills humans with murderous rage. They’re convinced that there’s a way to save those who are left—if they can stay alive. Because in this new, devas

Environmental CollapseDystopianIntenseNear Future
❤️

Mara and Dann

Doris Lessing · 407 pages

Mara and Dann's journey begins when they are young children interrogated by "the bad man" and swiftly whisked away by rescuers from the only home they ever knew into the drought-ridden perils of Ifrik. Told to forget their real names forever or be killed, the brother and sister live for years among the primitive Rock People, taken in by one of their own kind but always outcasts. As the drought wor

Climate ChangeEnvironmental CollapseRefugee ExperienceDesert
❤️

The Year of the Flood

Margaret Atwood · 441 pages

The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the prese

Environmental CollapseNear FutureDystopianClimate Change
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The Running Man

Richard Bachman · 352 pages

DystopianNear FutureIntenseEconomic Inequality
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A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

Near FutureDystopianIntenseBleak
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The Running Man

Stephen King · 256 pages

The runaway bestseller about the ultimate reality showThe year is 2025. The Running Man is America's favorite television game show. Ben Richards is the program's latest contestant-and the Hunters' latest target in a rigged game of death…

Near FutureDystopianEconomic InequalityIntense
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The Sea and Summer

George Turner · 384 pages

Climate ChangeEnvironmental CollapseNear FutureEconomic Inequality
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Trail of Lightning

Rebecca Roanhorse · 287 pages

Environmental CollapseMorally Gray CharacterClimate ChangeIntense
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State of Fear

Michael Crichton · 680 pages

Climate ChangeNear FutureEnvironmental CollapsePolitical Corruption
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No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy · 320 pages

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed *Border Trilogy.* The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in th

DesertMorally Gray CharacterIntenseNoir
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Morally Gray CharacterPolitical CorruptionIntenseBleak
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Soylent Green

Harry Harrison · 224 pages

DystopianEnvironmental CollapseNear FutureEconomic Inequality
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Thunderhead

Neal Shusterman · 512 pages

HUMANS LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES. I CANNOT. **I MAKE NOT MISTAKES.** The Thunderhead is the perfect ruler of a perfect world, but it has no control over the scythedom. A year has passed since Rowan has gone off grid. Since then he has become an urban legend, a vigilante snuffing out corrupt scythes in a trial by fire. His story is told in whispers across the continent. As Scythe Anasta

DystopianPolitical CorruptionIntenseMorally Gray Character
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Hunger

Michael Grant

It's been three months since everyone under the age of fifteen became trapped in the bubble known as the FAYZ.Three months since all the adults disappeared.Gone. Food ran out weeks ago. Everyone is starving, but no one wants to figure out a solution. And each day, more and more kids are evolving, developing supernatural abilities that set them apart from the kids without powers.Tension rises and

DystopianEnvironmental CollapseIntenseBleak
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Altered Carbon

Richard K. Morgan · 480 pages

Mankind is strung out across interstellar space, and human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies, but some things never change, so when Takeshi is downloaded into the body of a ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he shouldn't be surprised.

Economic InequalityAnti-HeroNoirDystopian
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The Future

Naomi Alderman · 432 pages

Near FutureEconomic InequalityClimate ChangeConspiracy
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Flood

Stephen Baxter · 496 pages

The "deeply scary"(BBC Focus) new novel from a national bestselling and critically acclaimed author. View our feature on Stephen Baxter’s Flood. Four hostages are rescued from a group of religious extremists in Barcelona. After five years of being held captive together, they make a vow to always watch out for one another. But they never expected this… The world they have returned to has been trans

Climate ChangeEnvironmental CollapseNear FutureBleak
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Gold Fame Citrus

Claire Vaye Watkins · 352 pages

"The much-anticipated first novel from a Story Prize-winning "5 Under 35" fiction writer. In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins's story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in

Climate ChangeEnvironmental CollapseDesertNear Future
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Blindness

Jose Saramago · 327 pages

A city is struck by an epidemic of "white blindness." The first man to succumb sits in his car, waiting for the light to change. He is taken to an eye doctor, who does not know what to make of the phenomenon - and soon goes blind himself. The blindness spreads, sparing no one. Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards under instructions to shoot anyone tryi

DystopianIntensePolitical CorruptionBleak
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The Great Transition

Nick Fuller Googins · 352 pages

Climate ChangeNear FutureEconomic InequalityDystopian
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Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

James Patterson · 417 pages

In MAXIMUM RIDE: SAVING THE WORLD AND OTHER EXTREME SPORTS, the time has arrived for Max and her winged "Flock" to face their ultimate enemy and discover their original purpose: to defeat the takeover of "Re-evolution", a sinister experiment to re-engineer a select population into a scientifically superior master race...and to terminate the rest. Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel have alwa

Climate ChangeEnvironmental CollapseNear FutureScience Fiction
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V for Vendetta

Alan Moore · 296 pages

A seminal graphic novel that defined sophisticated storytelling, Alan Moore's best-selling V For Vendetta is a terrifying portrait of totalitarianism and resistance, superbly illustrated by artist David Lloyd. The graphic novel that inspired the hit movie V For Vendetta is a powerful story about loss of freedom and individuality.Set in a futuristic totalitarian England, a country without political

DystopianIntenseBleakAnti-Hero
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Iron Gold

Pierce Brown · 624 pages

"Ten years after the events of Morning Star, Darrow and the Rising are battling the remaining Gold loyalist forces and are closer than ever to abolishing the color-coded caste system of Society for good. But new foes will emerge from the shadows to threaten the imperfect victory Darrow and his friends have earned"--

IntenseMorally Gray CharacterRefugee ExperienceDystopian

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