Hell on Earth

1984, Brave New World, and The Handmaid's Tale are today's best-known dystopian novels. They represent a fast-growing genre that includes literally thousands of books that portray a future none of us would want to live in. In Hell on Earth, author and book critic Mal Warwick surveys 62 such novels-books that pose difficult questions about the society we are shaping together. Dystopian fiction reflects the world as it is and imagines what the future might hold. In an age of eroding civil liberties, a widening gap between rich and poor, unending conflict abroad, the increasing impact of climate change, and the ever-present threat of pandemic and nuclear holocaust, dystopian novels are relevant as never before.