My Favorite Lesser-Known Dystopian Novels

An upside of social distancing is that we have time to read.
Of course, most bookstores and libraries are closed right now. To me, that in
and of itself is a horror story!

Yet, even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can download a
Kindle app for free. Many libraries are making it easy to borrow digital books
during the crisis. Amazon is still just a click away and ready to deliver books
for your Kindle app, or, if you prefer, on Audible.

Recent events, including but not limited to the global
pandemic, have sparked much speculation of our future, and the chilling tales
fiction writers have told about what could lie ahead.

I’ve always loved dystopian novels, although I only learned
the word ‘dystopian’ in the past few years. I always called the genre ‘Future
Doom and Gloom.’ I believe I stole that term from one of my favorite roommates,
back in the day. She used the term to describe movies like Mad Max and The
Terminator.

We are all familiar with new instant classics like The
Hunger Games trilogy, as well as older, well-loved classics like Brave
New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984.

The 1980s brought us some great dystopian fiction written by
women. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, has become more famous
than ever because of the terrifying and poignant Hulu series. There was another
great lesser-known feminist dystopian novel that emerged from the 1980s. Have
you read The Gate to Women’s Country, by Sheri S. Tepper? This
post-apocalyptic tome supposes a matriarchy rising out of a nuclear war, and a
culture that separates men from women in an effort to curb violent tendencies.

Some of my favorite dystopian novels could also be
considered feminist novels, like The Handmaid’s Tale and the Gate to
Women’s Country. I recently discovered that one of my most formative
feminist Pagan writers, Starhawk, is also a novelist.

Her dystopian stories, The Fifth Sacred Thing, its
sequel, ‘City of Refuge’, and prequel, ‘Walking to Mercury’
create a terrifyingly believable future world. Yet, they are uplifting and
hopeful, because they also share a vision of the sustainable world we could
still create.

This is equally true for one of my favorite books ever, Woman
on the Edge of Time, by author Marge Piercy. Published in 1976, this story
features a radical future vision for sustainability and equality, while
blatantly pointing out the obvious errors of our own time, known in this future
as “The Age of Greed and Waste”.

Almost twenty years later, Marge Piercy wrote a less hopeful but highly entertaining dystopian novel about a love affair between an android and a human woman, set in a future where pollution and climate change have ravaged the land, and corporations have become the government. She, He and
It was published in 1991, and has been described as a ‘cypberpunk novel’.

We all remember Ira Levin as the brilliant author of Rosemary’s
Baby. In my opinion, that well-loved story pales in comparison to Levin’s
dystopian novel, This Perfect Day, published in 1970.

The future world of This Perfect Day has no war and
no crime. Even the weather is regulated, all thanks to UniComp, a giant
computer which controls all aspects of life.

In these difficult times, dystopian fiction can comfort us
as we realize that, by comparison, things in real life aren’t all that bad yet.
Dystopian fiction can scare us with the similarities we see to life as we
currently know it. And, because most dystopian tales are stories of resistance
and survival, these views of our imagined future can serve to give us hope in
difficult times.

The Magicians: A Review of Two Great Novels

Take one look at Lev Grossman’s website and you will discover he is everything a young New York author should be. He is witty, humble and a wee bit sardonic. He wasn’t an overnight success – he actually had to work for it.

Although I don’t read a lot of fiction, I stumbled on his two-book series (I understand it is soon to be a trilogy). So far, the series is comprised of The Magician, and The Magician King. Both have made it to the New York Times Bestseller List, and with good reason. These are some of the best books ever.

The Magicians is an urban fantasy. True confession – I had never heard of the genre before I picked up the book. Apparently an urban fantasy is a fantasy story in a modern context. It requires some skill from the author to suspend our disbelief. Grossman is that skilled. He had me completely bought in to real human magicians from Brooklyn, and a dragon living in the canals of Venice.

The Magicians is sort of Harry Potter for grownups, with the Narnia Chronicles thrown in. Our protagonist is Quentin Coldwater. At the start of the series he is a high-school senior from Brooklyn.

Quentin is the kind of kid with whom we all identify. Either we were him, or we knew someone like him. He is an intelligent, awkward geek with a crush on his best friend’s girl and a penchant for stage magic.

This is one of the reasons these books are so likeable. Grossman creates believable characters with real depth, and puts them in fantastical situations. Quentin’s story is a fantasy of magic and mayhem, and a classic tale of a boy’s struggle to become a man.

Quentin is recruited to become a student at a secret college of magic. While there are some similarities between Hogwarts and Quentin’s school, Breakbills College of Magical Pedagogy, there are many differences, too.

First, since it is a college, there is opportunity for alcohol abuse and sex. That’s what college is really always about, right? Second, Grossman dives into the spiritual aspect of magic. One thing that always bothered me about the Harry Potter books is that, beyond the eternal struggle of good and evil and the triumphant power of love, religion and spirituality are largely ignored. The kids celebrate Christmas, but we have no idea what they believe in and how that squares with magic.

In The Magicians, we find there are scientific magicians, Wiccan magicians, and even Christian magicians, all trying to discover the true source and essence of magic itself.

At the heart of the story is Quentin’s love of a series of childhood books about a magical world called Fillory. The similarity between the Fillory and Further series and the Chronicles of Narnia is too striking to be happenstance.

But rather than feeling like a cheap copy, the exquisitely detailed Fillory stories felt familiar enough that I inherently understood Quentin’s fascination with the childhood books. How would I feel if I had a chance to actually visit actual Narnia?

As with most things in life, what fascinates us does so for a reason. As so it turns out that Quentin’s fascination with the Fillory and Further series, and with stage magic, is prophetic and meaningful.

Quentin is a real magician, and on his magical journey he discovers an important fact. Fillory exists.

Along the way, Quentin discovers other things, too. Love, greed, laziness, friendship, sacrifice and the true meaning of heroism are all part of Quentin’s magical journey.

In these two books Quentin travels from his boyhood home of Brooklyn to the elite and protected halls of magical academia and all the way to Fillory, with stops in the realms of underground magicians in cities around the world. I can’t wait to see where he goes in the next book.