Tomorrow we’ll consider Utopias, but today the topic is yes, the dystopian setting. Depictions of dystopias have shown up in media for many decades, but the word arguably rose in vernacular usage with the wave of YA books and book adaptations led by The Hunger Games in the late 2000s and 2010s. What do you find to be the most interesting or well-developed depiction of a dystopian future?

Among the Ruins Bonus: Is there anything that you’ve encountered in a dystopian story that you thought was “positive” in spite of the setting? Something particularly cool that, in that reality, has only come to exist because of the bad things that preceded it?

Whoa Bonus: What is your favorite story of a golden age in the past that somehow evolved, for better or worse, into our present?