Apparently it doesn't matter who gets elected president this month; America is scheduled for a complete and psychotic make-over in two years from now. The world's favorite subject is quickly becoming How the World Will End, which is kind of like hanging out with your friends and all deciding to draw comic strips about how the others are going to kick the bucket.
All the same, I love dystopia and apocalyptic novels. I posted here in July, "Usually, in dystopians, Nazis come back to life and everyone has to live in little shacks, and the love triangles are made up crazy people and celebrities and bakers." (Should that not be the catchphrase of all YA books lately?)
But how will they all fit together? With so many depressing predictions for the end of the world, we're going to need to operate on a very tight schedule.
If you see a book you like or haven't read, click on the cover for more info.
2013: Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
First things first, the moon must be hit by an asteroid. Zombies-shmombies. The moon has to be really big in the background before I can even think about that. In Life As We Knew It, the moon is sent into a closer orbit with the earth, causing climate changes, natural disasters, and tides rising, making this novel the perfect segway into dystopia as we know it. In the meantime, The Host can run around for 400 pages. It's a win-win.
2020: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
Zombie geeks, now is your time. And your mother laughed when you bought a flame thrower. We'll allot you five years to rule the earth in ax-wielding glory before finding a cure. And your mother will still laugh at your flame thrower. Unfortunately, for the apocalypse to continue, we've got a lot more ground to cover.
2025: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Why does this book ALWAYS come up? Maybe it's because I'm too excited for the movie. However, in 2025, people are already studying Harry Potter in school as classic literature. Everyone has that old Ender's Game movie memorized, so it won't take us too long to recover from a couple of well-placed alien attacks and world-dominating governments. Well, maybe a little bit of time.
2104: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Classic lit fans, rejoice! Fahrenheit gets its day. Of course, that means all your favorite classic lit is destroyed by fire. Luckily, firemen will be unemployed sooner than later, because it's a pretty short book. So stay tuned, citizens, for . . .
2177: Matched by Ally Condie
Evolving out of the Fahrenheit society comes Matched, which holds plenty of the same characteristics as its predecessor. Matched is still big on censorship and creepy pills, but introduces the world to a new concept as well: love triangles. The future slowly morphs into a place where a romance can no longer be a romance unless it involves an indecisive girl, a blond guy, and a brunette one. One of the three must limp. Or be an outlaw. Or both.
2177: City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
In the meantime, a group of semi-sane people decide to ditch dystopia and hop underground. To create . . . a dystopia. In City of Ember, a group of people formulate an underground society when living above ground becomes just too scary. Of course there is the problem of running out of food and electricity. Read the book.
2205: The Hunger Games by- do you really not know?
(Suzanne Collins)
I really wanted to be alive for this one, but unfortunately Panem is established a little outside my life-expectancy zone. From the ashes of psychotic book-burners and zombie purged lands comes my personal favorite. Katniss, as the great-great-granddaughter of Hawkeye, (the Avengers apocalypse happens before the rest of this of course, but unfortunately it's not a book) proves that those flamethrowers were tacky and takes us old school with a bow and arrow and a love triangle Of course.
What did we miss? Leave a comment if there's a dystopia you'd like to see squeezed in.
Check back next week for an early Halloween post!
