Useful dystopian fiction about US breakdown – ideas? (I have three)

Well, fiction can help us make maps of the way the world is/might be going (1).

Given the long-gestating but finally arriving proper shitshow in the USA (2), it seems like a good idea to get together a fiction reading list.

Without further adieu (3) they are

Jack London, The Iron Heel

This is brilliant, imo. Terrifying, plausible etc. About an oligarchy determined to defend itself, and creating private armies to terrorise the population into submission. So, total fiction, obvs.

Alan Seymour The Coming Self-Destruction of the United States of America

Hmmm, I read this on the Trans-Siberian railway trip in 2011, and my memories are hazy. I remember it being engaging but also lurid and extremely violent. What’s not to love?

Octavia Butler The Parable of the Sower

Written in the early 1990s and set, er, now… it is about race war, California with no water, immiseration, state violence. So, total fiction, obvs. An absolute banger, full of hard-won wisdom.

I suppose you could also include Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time? Atwood etc What else?

I should also do a dystopian UK fiction blog at some point.

Footnotes

(1) #NotAllFiction can or should be, obvs

(2) Or rather, the re-emergence of the shitshow, never far below the surface, especially for people of colour and left-wing dissidents

(3) That’s deliberate