10 interesting works of dystopian fiction that predate George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is perhaps the most famous dystopian novel in the world, with the adjective ‘Orwellian’ being listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and the phrases ‘Big Brother’, ‘thoughtcrime’, and ‘newspeak’ being part of the language. But Orwell’s classic novel didn’t arise in isolation, and there were a number of earlier dystopian novels written before Orwell put pen to paper (or finger to typewriter). Here is our pick of the ten best early dystopian novels worth checking out. Okay, so they’re not all novels – there are a couple of short stories in here too. But then variety is the spice of life…
Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872). The fictional land of Erewhon – almost ‘nowhere’ backwards, in homage to the origins of dystopian fiction in the no-place that is ‘Utopia’ – is the setting for this novel, often called anti-utopian but, we would argue, also one that qualifies for the label ‘dystopian’. Among the other things satirised by Butler in this book is the rise of the machines, which Butler argues will evolve at an ever-faster rate – along the lines of Darwinian evolution – until the machines eventually overtake humans. Before James Cameron came up with The Terminator, there was Butler’s novel, and it’s a hugely enjoyable read. We’ve discussed Butler’s Erewhon in a separate post.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (1871). In this novel – written by the man who penned the most infamous opening line in all of literature – a traveller descends into the bowels of the earth and discovers a race of angelic creatures (the ‘coming race’ of the title) who are possessed of superhuman strength thanks to a mysterious substance called Vril. The name of this fictional substance inspired the Victorian makers of a new beef extract to come up with the name ‘Bovril’ – after Vril, the fictional substance in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel with 
life-giving properties, and Bos, the Latin for cow/beef.
Anthony Trollope, The Fixed Period (1882). Published in the last year of Trollope’s prolific life and literary career (he wrote some 47 novels in total), The Fixed Period is set in the year 1980 on the fictional island republic of Britannula. The narrator, John Neverbend, is president of the island. He wishes to pass a euthanasia bill sentencing every citizen to death when they turn 67. David Lodge has written a detailed article about this little-read novel here and we’ve offered an analysis of its major themes here. (Fans of Trollope and Victorian literature might also be interested in our interesting facts about Anthony Trollope.)
Margaret Oliphant, ‘The Land of Darkness’ (1887). Published originally in the popular Blackwood’s magazine, this short story written by Queen Victoria’s favourite novelist tells of a hellish world modelled on Dante’s Inferno, with a bit of Victorian industrialisation thrown in. The narrator encounters the slave labour of men toiling away in furnaces before being shown what must be the first ‘robots’ in English literature. More about this curious story here.
Jack London, The Iron Heel (1908). Praised by George Orwell in 1943 for being ‘a very remarkable prophecy of the rise of fascism’, this novel is often regarded as the first properly modern dystopian novel, and was Jack London’s most clearly socialist work (though London himself maintained that his particular political outlook was ‘the socialism of the caveman’). London also wrote a post-apocalyptic novel in 1912, The Scarlet Plague, which is even less well-known now: in 2013, an epidemic wipes out much of the world’s population, and sixty years later one of the survivors tries to forestall mankind’s reversion to a primitive hunter-gatherer state.
E. M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’ (1909). This is another short story but is essential reading for any fans of early, pre-Orwell dystopian fiction. In the future, mankind dwells underground where they rely on a machine for all their needs. Like many other dystopian stories, Forster’s has gone on to influence popular culture in numerous fields (the pop group Level 42 even wrote a song about it) and it has been pronounced one of the best-ever science-fiction stories on several occasions. In his diary in January 1908, the year before the story was published, Forster wrote that 
‘I have been born at the end of the age of peace and can’t expect to feel anything but despair. Science, instead of freeing man – the Greeks nearly freed him by right feeling – is enslaving him to machines…. God what a prospect!’ We should view ‘The Machine Stops’ as Forster’s imagining of a nightmare future in which this ‘prospect’ is realised. The story also anticipated some later technological inventions, such as instant messaging and video conferencing.
H. G. Wells, The Sleeper Awakes (1910). The title of this Wells novel echoes Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’, and even if this is unconscious on Wells’s part, it is quite a nice fact, given that Forster had written ‘The Machine Stops’ as ‘a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H. G. Wells’ (possibly A Modern Utopia). The Sleeper Awakes was itself a rewriting of Wells’s earlier novel When the Sleeper Wakes (1899). A Victorian Rip van Winkle figure (called Graham) falls into a heavy coma and when he eventually wakes up over 200 years later, it is to discover that he has become the richest man in the world, thanks to the interest on his bank account. The future is Graham’s worst nightmare: although technology has advanced at a rapid rate in 200 years, mankind has not, it would seem, improved with it. We included this book in our pick of the best of H. G. Wells’s novels.
Yevgey Zamyatin, We (1924). Set in a future world largely composed of glass – so the ‘One State’ can spy on everyone more easily – this novel would later be a significant influence on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. As with Ayn Rand’s Anthem (see below), individuality has largely disappeared with everyone dressing the same and walking in step with each other. As with many great mid-twentieth-century dystopias, conformity is the watchword for the nightmarish world depicted in this Russian classic.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932). Set in the year A. F. 632 (i.e. 632 years ‘After [Henry] Ford’), this novel is, like many of Huxley’s early society comedies (such as Antic Hay and Crome Yellow), parodic and satirical as much as it is grave and serious. An attack on Fordist capitalism and sexual licence among other things, the novel would prove Huxley’s most popular, and he would return to its treatment of utopianism in two later works: Brave New World Revisited (as we discuss in our post detailing some interesting Aldous Huxley facts) and his last, utopian novel Island (described by critic Frank Kermode as ‘one of the worst novels ever written’).
Ayn Rand, Anthem (1938). Although often derided as a bad novel, even by Rand’s admirers, Anthem is nevertheless an interesting book. This short novel, set in a new Dark Age at some unspecified point in the future, depicts a world in which all human individuality has disappeared. Rand wanted the book to be made into a cartoon film, and even approached Walt Disney about the idea, but the film was never made.
If you enjoyed this pick of the best early dystopian novels, you might also enjoy our fascinating facts about Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. We also have more dystopian fun in our collection of interesting Hunger Games facts and our fascinating facts about James Dashner’s The Maze Runner.
Image (top): Cover of first edition of Erewhon, 1872; Wikimedia Commons; public domain. Image (bottom): Cover of The Sleeper Awakes, via Chris Drumm on Flickr, 2010.
Pingback: 10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature
Pingback: Five Fascinating Facts about The Maze Runner | Interesting Literature
Pingback: The Best H. G. Wells Novels | Interesting Literature
Wonderful post! I am a hug fan of dystopian fiction, so thank you for adding to my TBR list!
Pingback: Five Fascinating Facts about Jack London | Interesting Literature
Reblogged this on memoirandremains.
Pingback: May 2015 Wrap-Up | Nut Free Nerd
Another very interesting post! So how about a conjecture in your part?
Does turmoil at tumultuous times (Industrial Age, Bolshevik Revolution, Great Depression) spawn these dystopian novels and even WWII for 1984?
If so how do we explain Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange”?
This is a really cool list! I’ll have to make sure my wife sees this. 1984 is her favorite novel.
Good stuff, as always.
Reblogged this on The Speculative Fiction of William Gosline and commented:
Amazing how many of these authors are recognized as lions in realist, Victorian, or even modernist fiction. But just as Cormac McCarthy’s foray into Dystopia by writing “The Road” shows, a great writer refuses to be pigeonholed!
One thing strikes me: that many of these writers are recognized for their realist fiction and not considered by and large to be speculative writers at all. But as Cormac McCarthy’s recent foray into Dystopia shows, a great writer will not suffer pigeonholing. Some of these are going straight onto my list of books to read for my upcoming MFA program in creative writing. Thanks!
Pingback: The Best Dystopian Novels Written Before Orwell’s 1984 | My BlogThe Philosopher's blog.
Reblogged this on RandomRaeRam.
if interestingliterature ever make list of dystopia book what someone write after 1949 monkey make suggestment of maybe include riddley walker by mr russell hoban.
Wow! Very cool list – I’m putting some of these on my to-be-read list!
Reblogged this on Toward the within….
Reblogged this on JCU // Creative Writing Workshop.
Pingback: Dystopian Trollope | the trollope jupiter
This is truely awesome info.
I’ll have to check these out. I’ve only read a few of them. I’m curious to see what London has to say.
hey I love HG Wells too.
Awesome post! Seems I still have a lot of cool dystopian reading to catch up to since I haven’t read more than half of these!!!
Reblogged this on Anakalian Whims and commented:
What an awesome list!
Reblogged this on Mary Blowers, Author and commented:
This is fascinating. I will be looking for some of these books to read. I love things like Journey to the Center of the Earth and 1984, so I will be happy to find them-preferably downloadable online. If you know where they are send me links! Thanks.
Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger.
This post is awesome. I am actually in the middle of writing a dystopian ‘novel’ and I needed a lot of other dystopian novels as inspiration. Great post!
The Machine Stops is the only short story I read at school, which I remember all these years later. Thanks for reminding me of the author. Sue
Some interesting choices hear. I haven’t read much dystopian literature, although I love the genre. 1984 reads like the weak link in the genre. The first part is great, but Orwell’s sexual frustration leak into the page. It’s actually true. The guy was terrible with women. It’s a shame it ruined a great novel.
I have a book entitled Science Fiction by the Rivals of HG Wells. Unfortunately I havent read all the stories therein but looking at the contents I see stories by George Griffith, Grant Allen and Cutcliffe Hyne – all writing at the same time as HG!
I’ve always thought the future world of ‘The Time Machine’ rather dystopian.
Reblogged this on Wyldwood Books.
Reblogged this on For the love of Books!!.
Great listing. A very strange one you didn’t list is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, which had two sequels. It’s about a race of women who apparently do not need men. It’s considered a “utopian” novel often, but I think while the women may think it’s utopian, the men would definitely say it’s dystopian.
No doubt, when sleepers awake the world will tremble…