In our current age of political instability, MR PORTER considers the best novels that capture humanity at its worst.

The etymology of the word “dystopia” is as you would expect: from the ancient Greek, it’s literal translation is “bad place”. However, its antonym (and antecedent) “utopia”, coined in the 1516 novel of the same name by Sir Thomas More, doesn’t translate as “good place” – it translates as “non-place”. The comparison says a lot about humanity’s view of itself and the end-games we envisage for the world we’ve created. It’s possible to imagine our perfect utopian societies but they’re nothing more than imaginary – they’re non-places. _Dys_topias on the other hand… we can chart a route to the bad places almost too easily.

Which probably explains why dystopias have become such a mainstay of popular culture – the most powerful dystopian visions don’t feel too far removed from our own current realities. In fact, two of the cultural events we’re most looking forward to this month are the film adaptation of Mr Dave Eggers’ bestselling novel The Circle, and the long-awaited TV series based on Ms Margaret Atwood’s iconic parable, The Handmaid’s Tale. Both are set in the near-future with scarily recognisable premises, with the former taking the relentless positivity of tech-startup culture to a sinister new place and the latter envisaging a society in which women have been forced to give up all agency over their bodies and lives…

Meanwhile in a politically unsettling climate, people seem to be catching up on the dystopian back catalogue. In January, multiple news sources reported soaring sales of Mr George Orwell’s 1984. The same month, BBC News noted that Mr Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Mr Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Mr Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here were also climbing up the Amazon charts. All this goes to say that we’re clearly in the mood for some grim visions of the future. But which ones are the best (or do we mean worst)?

Below are five of our favourite books from the canon of dystopian literature to help whet your appetite for The Circle and The Handmaid’s Tale. We’ve skipped the obvious – if you haven’t read 1984, Mr Franz Kafka’s The Trial or Mr Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, you should, soon. Who knows where we’re all going to end up? But be reassured, if we do find ourselves trapped in, say, a nightmarish desert resort, or a high school death-match, or a battle with militant Quebecois separatists then these five tomes will tell you all you need to know to survive. Enjoy/despair!

Mr JG Ballard (1971)

It seems apt to kick off with a collection of stories from a writer who has become synonymous with dystopian literature. “Ballardian” is now officially recognised by the Collins English Dictionary as a byword for, “dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments”. While Crash (1973) has become his most widely recognised dystopian work (thanks in large part to the controversies surrounding Mr David Cronenberg’s 1996 film adaptation), this lesser-known short story collection is no less excellent.

Vermilion Sands features tales that all take place in its eponymous vacation resort (think a surreal, nightmarish version of Palm Springs). While the stories cover Mr Ballad’s usual bleak themes of psychological disintegration, there is a certain playfulness not present in much of his other work, thanks to a focus on bizarrely humorous, invented art forms. The Times Literary Supplement summed the collection up well in its review, describing it as, “a mixture of appalling clarity and the exotic”.

Mr Koushun Takami (1999)

Before the controversial film came this controversial novel. It’s a wonderfully pulpy, violent affair, taking place in a near-future where high school teenagers are forced to fight to the death by the authoritarian government of the “Republic of Greater East Asia”. Critically acclaimed upon its release, it was denied top prize at the Japan Horror Fiction Awards a few years earlier – while all judges later confirmed that it was the best work, they felt that its content was too shocking: some felt it too closely mirrored recent real-life violence inflicted on minors, while one judge simply stated that, “no matter how interesting it might be, I’m not sure we should be writing stories like this”.

Given the moral outrage then, it is perhaps surprising that the book’s legacy is most keenly felt in the youth-oriented, world-conquering The Hunger Games series by Ms Suzanne Collins (who claims she had never heard of Battle Royale when writing her oeuvre, though the conceptual similarities are striking). What’s more disturbing – the relentlessly ultra-violent satire of Battle Royale or the fact that such concepts can so readily be packaged into a PG-13 star vehicle for Ms Jennifer Lawrence just over a decade later?

Ms PD James (1992)

Set in England in 2021, crime writer Ms PD James’ The Children Of Men depicts a human race that has been inexplicably unable to reproduce since the mid-1990s. Like many of the best dystopian novels written over the last century or so, one of the things that makes The Children Of Men so impressive is just how accurately its imagined future came to predict our own present. “Remember what happened in Europe in the 1990s?”, says a member of the novel’s ruling far-right party, The Council Of England. “People became tired of invading hordes… who expected to take over and exploit the benefits which had been won over centuries by intelligence, industry and courage.” In Ms James’ rendering of the early 21st century, humanity is not so much hurtling towards extinction as dwindling inexorably in its direction: sadly and angrily, with those in power lashing out at weaker members of society despite the ultimate futility of doing so.

It’s rare that an author thinks highly of an adaptation of their work, particularly when the film deviates as much from its source material as Mr Alfonso Cuarón’s Children Of Men does (it doesn’t simply lose the definite article). Ms James thought it to be excellent though – which it is. An article in the The New York Times does point out however that the novel is able to make “fine points the film has no time for: childless women push dolls in baby carriages, and couples hold christening ceremonies after the births of kittens”.

Mr Alan Moore and Mr Dave Gibbons (1986)

It’s a shame many people will have heard of this epic comic book satire via its 2009 film adaptation, directed by Mr Zack Snyder. Because it’s difficult to imagine a piece of art more perfectly fitted to its original medium than Watchmen. The way that co-creators – writer Mr Alan Moore and artist Mr Dave Gibbons combine words with pictures truly is art. Together they conjure a nihilistic, postmodern deconstruction of the superhero mythos, envisioning the sunset of a cold war that was forever changed by the emergence of a super-powered being (among other hardboiled, noir-ish plot twists).

Watchmen is the comic book for those who think they’re somehow above the literary capabilities of the format (do those people still exist?). Just take a look at its inclusion on Time Magazine’s 100 greatest English-language novels for confirmation of that.

Mr David Foster Wallace (1996)

…Because not all works of dystopian fiction have to follow the gruelling post-apocalyptic templates of the sci-fi world. Some, such as Mr Wallace’s Infinite Jest, can simply exist in a world not so dissimilar to our own – one of rehab programs, tennis academies and, erm, militant Quebecois separatist groups. Dystopian themes become increasingly overwhelming throughout, as Mr Wallace constructs a sprawling, postmodern narrative of addiction, suicide, and familial relationships around the emergence of a videotape so entertaining that its viewers immediately lose interest in everything else, ultimately causing their death.

Describing the narrative as sprawling, by the way, is something of an understatement: the book runs to almost 1,100 pages with approximately 400 footnotes (the structure necessitates a unique reading experience that involves two bookmarks and the wrist strength of a rock climber). If you can penetrate its heft however – it takes about 200 pages to start truly enjoying it – Infinite Jest reveals itself to be one of the most glorious and vital commentaries on our slow slide towards a tech-dictated dystopia out there.

Keep up to date with The Daily by signing up to our weekly email roundup. Click here to update your email preferences