7 Classic Dystopian Books Like Brave New World

Hello, intrepid readers! If “Brave New World” left you awestruck with its visionary glimpse into a dystopian future and has you thirsting for more intellectually stimulating adventures, you’re in the perfect spot. Aldous Huxley’s classic has inspired generations, and its themes are more relevant than ever.

Books like Brave New World feature one or more of the following: Government control, environmental destruction, technological control, survival, and all loss of individualism. Whether it’s the exploration of societal constructs, the ethics of science, or the nature of freedom and happiness, we’ve got you covered with a lineup of books that echo these profound inquiries. So, settle in, prepare your mind for a thrilling ride, and let’s explore some books that will keep the cogs turning and the pages flying.

7 Books Like Brave New World (Classic Dystopian Books)

Like “Brave New World,” similar books present visions of future societies characterized by oppression, conformity, and the loss of individuality. These dystopias serve as cautionary tales, warning against the dangers of unchecked technological and social progress.

Moreover, they examine themes of control and manipulation, particularly in the context of government and technology. We can explore how authoritarian regimes, surveillance, and propaganda shape the lives of individuals and societies. Here are seven such classic dystopian books for you. Let’s go!

1. Animal Farm

Animal Farm is published in 1945, is about a group of pigs that stage a rebellion against their human farmer. The Animals Rise to Power is based on the Russian Revolution of 1917. There’s a comment on how the revolution resulted in a more repressive, totalitarian, and deadly government than the one over three. It checks the government control box of dystopian fiction.

What I love about Animal Farm is that it’s a satire on equality that uses barnyard animals as a metaphor. The animals strive to live free from the tyranny of their human masters, inspired to rebel by a major old boar. The animals on Mr. Jones Manor Farm embrace animal ism, the animal equivalent of communism, and stage a revolution to achieve an idealistic state of justice and progress.

Napoleon becomes a totalitarian dictator who leads the animal farm into oppression where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. The book won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award and the Retro Hugo Award for Best Novella. Like Brave New World, the plot, storyline, narration, and characterization are excellent to enjoy every moment. So, take it!

Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Signet, 50th Anniversary Edition
Tropes: Satire, History, Biography
Number Of Pages: 140
Dimensions: 4.19 x 0.45 x 7.5 inches
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

2. Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies, written in 1954, sets its story around a group of schoolboys abandoned on a tropical island after their plane is shot down during a fictional atomic war. Conflicts emerge between the boys as they strive to build a civilization and fight for survival.

For obvious reasons, this checks the survival box of dystopian fiction back in an attempt to recreate the culture they left behind. The boys elect Ralph to lead with the intellectual piggy as a counselor. But Jack wants to lead, too. One by one, he lures the boys from civility and reason to the savage survivalism of primeval hunters in Lord of the Flies.

William Golding comments on the savagery that underlies even the most civilized human beings, the belief that humans are naturally inclined towards evil and violence, and how only self-realization will bring epiphany. So it’s one of the tensest books I’ve ever read. The fact all the characters are children is emphasized. It makes the violence more shocking somehow.

What I found clever about the book is that when the kids do terrible things. They do it in a way that is both innocent and deviant simultaneously, entirely out of character for children, and yet exactly how children behave. There’s a dichotomy there that’s interesting to read. If you love Brave New World, you must check this one out because their theme is very similar.

Author: William Golding
Publisher: Penguin Books (Reissue Edition)
Tropes: Adventure, Literature
Number Of Pages: 224
Reading age: 12+ years
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

3. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep takes place in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco after a global nuclear war in 1992. This 1968 novel was the basis for the film Blade Runner and explored the dangers of advanced technology, where androids are indistinguishable from humans.

Mass extinction has led to artificial animals. In the future, Androids will invade Earth from space colonies and live indistinguishable from humans. The only way to tell who is an android is by taking the void comfort test.

It also deals with survivalism as a human species, which we also saw in Brave New World. The book’s central theme is that it openly questions how technology will change what it means to be human and the very essence of empathy. Who or what is deserving of empathy, and what isn’t it? Also, the author’s style leaves us with more questions at the end than when we started. If you love science-based stories with a dystopian vibe, you must read them as soon as possible.

Author: Philip K
Narrator: Scott Brick
Publisher: Random House Audio
Tropes: Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Philosophical, Post-apocalyptic, Feminism
Number Of Pages: 193
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

4. The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is another sci-fi horror fiction that represents politics, religion, and the Holocaust. It’s like the epitome of a dystopian society set in an alternate reality where Nazis won the Second World War. It deals with all five definitions of dystopian fiction published in 1962. The story is set in an America divided into the Japanese-controlled Pacific States of America and the German-controlled eastern portion of the country.

In this reality, a man known as the Man in the High Castle has written a book where the Allies won the war, and the Nazis lost. Seemingly a window into another universe. The book is so great that it would have been so easy for PKD (author) to glamorize the story with Nazis running around killing everyone and rebellions. However, the author approached this differently. It’s a quiet, subtle book that looks at how ordinary people deal with the question of morality and how they survive during dark times. While reading, I remembered the novel Brave New World because it also has the same situations. So I highly recommend it to you.

Author: Philip K
Narrator: Jeff Cummings
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Tropes: Alternate History, Utopia, Espionage, Metaphysics
Number Of Pages: 259
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

5. We

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, written in 1920, follows a spacecraft engineer living in a future nation called One State. There is no love, music, or individuality in one state. The citizens wear uniforms and are referred to by numbers. The story follows D-503, a rocket scientist who writes a diary trying to convince anyone who reads it of the perfection of the one state. He runs into trouble. When he becomes involved with AI 330, he becomes repulsed and yet strangely attracted to her and is drawn further into the resistance against the one state.

We deal with the themes of government control and the loss of individualism. There’s also a comment from Zamyatin on the government’s willingness to sacrifice the individual’s rights for what is seen as the greater good. There’s one quote in the book that has stayed with me that epitomizes the loss of individuality and control of self every morning with six-wheeled precision at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up, millions of us. The world-building and fantasy elements are beautifully done, but some readers argue with the plotline. Overall, you can enjoy a story similar to Brave New World.

Author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
Translator: Clarence Brown
Publisher: Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics
Tropes: Poetry, Politics, Satire, Mathematics
Number Of Pages: 221
Book Weight: 6.6 ounces
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

6. The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale was first published in 1985 and took place in a dystopian society where nearly all women have become infertile. So, the few who can still have babies are rounded up, brainwashed, and assigned to powerful men in a distorted attempt to restore the human race. The story follows one of these women, Offred, as she becomes the handmaid of the commander. The Handmaid’s Tale checks many boxes in our dystopian bags, such as government control, environmental destruction, survival, and loss of individualism.

This is my number one favorite dystopian fiction for many reasons. Firstly, it’s flawlessly written. Secondly, it deals with many real-world issues, such as the fact that many Western countries face declining birth rates and aging populations. Oppression of women and religion’s involvement in that society is a patriarchal stereotype.

I was also captured by how Atwood created the dystopian Society by mixing arguably the worst aspects of many institutions. Like Brave New World, it takes government-controlled markets and secret police, typical in communist societies, indoctrination and restricting education from organized religion and brutal caste systems from fascism. So, it’s a fantastic read for classic readers.

Author: Margaret Atwood
Narrator: Claire Danes
Publisher: Audible Studios
Tropes: Feminism, Sci-fi, Age-gap, Dark
Number Of Pages: 314
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback

7. 1984

In George Orwell’s 1984, the world is under complete government control. The fictional dictator Big Brother enforces omnipresent surveillance over the people living in three intercontinental super states remaining after a world war.

The story follows government employee Winston Smith, whose job in the Ministry of Truth involves rewriting history to suit his country’s leader’s current agenda. He begins a journal documenting his misery and the constant fear he lives in. Then he becomes involved with Julia, where together they revel in their hatred against society and become involved with an underground group known as the Brotherhood.

The book checks every single one of our dystopian boxes: government control, environmental destruction, technological control, survival, and loss of individualism. Orwell’s novel was a masterpiece that helped prevent the future that it predicted by being so scary and so accurate about how things might turn out. It gave us a vocabulary and intellectual tools with which to combat Bolshevism. Brave New World has proved more prophetic of a greater danger that comes not from outside, free societies but inside them.

Huxley wasn’t quite as good a novelist as Orwell. There’s a lot that’s harrowing in Brave New World, but there are also things that aren’t convincing. Whereas in 1984, you’re living the nightmare from beginning to end. Huxley is a bit more like C.S. Lewis, a deeper thinker but less of a consummate artist when it comes to writing.

The reason this is my all-time favorite dystopian fiction after Brave New World, it can be boiled down to the fact that it’s so damn bleak. It’s shocking and violent. The story isn’t fun, but it’s gripping, presenting us with a horrifying version of ourselves. If you still need to read it, you have to read it.

Author: George Orwell
Narrator: Simon Prebble
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Tropes: Sociology, Political-thrillers, Fantasy
Number Of Pages: 368
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle

More books related to “Brave New World,” consider the following:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: The story is about society’s rules, and the protagonist must decide whether to rebel against the oppressive regime.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: Children are trained as military leaders to defend the planet, which raises questions about the cost of the morality of the methods used to achieve it.

The Giver by Lois Lowry: In a dystopian society, everything appears perfect, raising questions about the principles imposed on the population.

The Children of Men by P.D. James: Humanity is facing extinction due to a widespread infertility crisis, and everyone struggles with hope and the meaning of life.

These books offer similar themes to “Brave New World” and are well worth checking out for fans of dystopian fiction. I’d love to know your favorite in the comments section below. Also, you can suggest to me another similar book, and I want to add them to my TBR list. Happy reading!

Last Words

Well, there you have it: a list of thought-provoking reads that are sure to quench your thirst for more stories like “Brave New World.” Each of these books offers a unique perspective on the future, humanity, and the complex world we navigate. We hope this list sparks your curiosity and leads you to discover new worlds that challenge, entertain, and inspire.

The journey through dystopian landscapes is not just about the destination but what we learn about ourselves along the way. Happy exploring, and may your reading adventure bring you insights, excitement, and endless wonder.

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