Top Ten Tuesday: Futuristic Societies I Want No Part Of

Top Ten Tuesday is an original blog meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is “Top Ten Historical Settings You Love/ Ten Historical Settings You’d Love To See or Top Futuristic Books You Love/Ten Futuristic Societies I’d Love To Read in Books — basically this week is all about the past or the future….spin it however you choose!” So this week’s topic made me a little nervous. As someone who picks up a lot of fantasy, I don’t often stray into historical or “futuristic” reads. While making a list of books I’ve read that take place in the future, it occurred to me that I would not want to be a part of the large majority of these worlds, thus this week’s topic was born. Covers linked to Goodreads.

1. Benny Imura series by Jonathan Maberry – I am a big fan of zombies, but let’s be honest, I wouldn’t want to live in a world where the dead come back to life and try to eat me. While I’d like to imagine I’d come out of a disaster like this wielding a katana Michonne-style, it’s very likely I’d be dead in less than a week.

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – Hmm, live in a world where the people in power force children to kill each other? I’m going to have to say no. I’m even a bit (a lot) wary about this whole Hunger Games theme park. The people making it do realize the book is about children whose only means of survival is to kill one another while the powers that be trivialize it like it’s a form of entertainment…kind of like a theme park.

3. Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman – This “future” world really creeps me out. I can’t even properly talk about it. Here’s the Goodreads summary: “The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child ‘unwound,’ whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end.”

4. Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis – This takes the concept of a drought to an extreme. Everyone is desperate for a water source and will do anything to get one. Lynn fights to keep control over the pond her mother and her have been protecting for years. Just thinking about this book makes me a little thirsty.

5. 1984 by George Orwell – So technically 1984 has come and gone, but this book should still be included in “futuristic” fiction. Where do I even start with this one? Big Brother, the Thought Police, brainwashing, Orwell’s dystopian novel is both thought-provoking as well as down-right frightening.

6. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld – I wasn’t a big fan of this first book and so I never got around to finishing the series, but the concept of this one is really interesting. Teens undergo operations in order to turn them into “Pretties” and give them perfect problem-free lives. Sounds too good to be true? It is.

7. The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness – Imagine life on this planet has come to an end and the only way to save humanity is to start again on another planet. Imagine this planet has a few interesting effects on the population. Men’s thoughts are no longer silent, every thought they think is heard by everyone. Even though I’m a woman and my own thoughts would be safe, I would not like to be stuck in a world where I could hear everything men think. I could probably be a little snarky here, but I’m going to choose not to 😉

8. The Program by Suzanne Young – This novel is truly frightening. In this world depression is treated like an infection, teens are monitored for signs they may be unhappy and any suspicious behavior results in these kids having their memories wiped out in order to give them a better life free of their unhappiness. The concept for this one literally makes me feel ill.

9. Starters by Lissa Price – I really didn’t enjoy this book when I read it several years ago, but the premise has always stayed with me. Imagine renting your body out to someone else. They get to be you for a period of time and when you return to your body you have no memory of how they used it. Ugh. So creepy.

10. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – I love this book, but I think it goes without saying (yet here I am saying it) that living in a world where people hunt down and burn books would be one of my worst nightmares.

Which literary societies would you not want to be a part of? What topic did you choose this week? Let me know in the comments and be sure leave a link to your own TTT post, so I can visit.