Speculative > Near Future
Featured Titles
A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society.
Year: 1962
Genre: Dystopian, Near Future, Speculative
After Things Fell Apart
by Ron Goulart
The time is a few decades from now, the place what used to be the United States, now disrupted by internal factionalism as well as a short-lived foreign invasion. Out of this chaotic background Ron Goulart has produced a swift-moving, witty and constantly delightful novel, a story of a future odyssey.
Year: 1970
Genre: Humor, Near Future
Gadget Man
by Ron Goulart
A new political map of America's west coast...Its dark wit bites through a brittle, phony, not-so-far-off world, exposing its hollow insides.
Year: 1972
Genre: Near Future
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
by Philip K. Dick
Jason Taverner--world-famous talk show host and man-about-town--wakes up one day to find that no one knows who he is--including the vast databases of the totalitarian government. And in a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner has no choice but to go on the run with a host of shady characters, including crooked cops and dealers of alien drugs. But do they know more than they are letting on? And just how can a person's identity be erased overnight?
Year: 1974
Genre: Chase Story, Near Future, Science Fiction
The Long Walk
by Stephen King
In the near future, when America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. Among them is sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty, and he knows the rules--keep a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you're out--permanently.
Year: 1979
Genre: Near Future, Thriller
Brinkman
by Ron Goulart
Brinkman is street-wise, moving with assurance down the mean streets of the future, through an America where life in the slums is an unrelenting grind of parsimonious welfare and petty thievery. He is determined to make a better life for himself; Brinkman is a young man who will go far . . . Too far, in fact.
Year: 1981
Genre: Near Future
Dr. Adder
by K.W. Jeter
The one that started it all - K. W. Jeter's first novel that took him 12 years to get published, despite every science fiction editor in America telling him it was a great book, exactly what they should be publishing, but were too afraid to pull the trigger on. The book about which Philip K. Dick said "will change your notions of what's possible in science fiction forever".
Year: 1984
Genre: Cyberpunk, Near Future
Dinner at Deviant's Palace
by Tim Powers
In the twenty-second century, the City of Angels is a tragic shell of its former self, having long ago been ruined and reshaped by nuclear disaster. Before he was in a band in Ellay, Gregorio Rivas was a redeemer, rescuing lost souls trapped in the Jaybirds cult of the powerful maniac Norton Jaybush. Rivas had hoped those days were behind him, but a desperate entreaty from a powerful official is pulling him back into the game.
Year: 1985
Genre: Dystopian, Fantasy, Near Future
Queen of Angels
by Greg Bear
In a world of wonders, wealth, and "perfect" mental health, a famous poet commits gruesome murder . . . Why? That crime, that question, leads a policewoman to a jungle of torture and forgotten gods; a writer to the bohemian shadows of a vast city; and a scientist directly into the mind-the nightmare soul-of the psychopath himself . . .
Year: 1990
Genre: Hard SF, Near Future, Technological Thriller
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Year: 1993
Genre: Near Future, Post Apocalypse, Science Fiction
Titles
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