Dystopian Science Fiction

A walk around the block, a quick drive, before shutting down your PC ? these short story collections are perfect for when you only have a few minutes to listen."

Three weeks after the nation's power grid goes down, chaos reigns. Food supplies have dried up. Fuel is running low. And the bleak, brutal winter is relentless. Fall Creek has forged a shaky peace, but the cost for safety proves higher than some are willing to pay. The town is a powder keg waiting to explode. For Hannah, home is finally within reach. But it won't be anything like she expected....

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

Darlene Bobich, the zombie killer, is on a mission to save her family. Can she succeed, even as more obstacles are thrown in her way: survivors bent on their own selfish needs, evolving zombies, and the rotting world around her?

In a fractured America teetering on the edge of chaos, The Hanging Creek Chronicles: Shadows of Martial Law plunges listeners into a gripping dystopian saga. When the President is impeached and the Speaker of the House declares herself leader, martial law sweeps the nation, shattering the illusion of stability. For Cole, a 20-year Air Force veteran living on a rural South Carolina farm, the world he knows unravels as the interstate—a lifeline to town—becomes a no-man’s-land of military control and lurking threats.

The plan was simple. Kill Marco, rescue the Avids, and disappear with Malachi. Then Cade stepped back into my life and shattered everything. He's been part of Solace all along, working for the Syndicate, searching for me for years. But I'm not the girl he once loved. Marco's pretty prison turned me into something darker, something that speaks to ghosts and has a hunger for revenge. The Volkovs are planning something big, the Syndicate is crumbling from betrayal, and someone is playing both sides. With Aurora at my side and the Avids rising in rebellion, we have one chance to strike back.

In a futuristic world where predictive software can map out the lives of every living person and their descendants, Naomi Prynne is on trial. The charge: endangerment by way of a pregnancy. Thirteen jurors will determine whether Naomi is allowed to carry the pregnancy to term, but the jurors are also all plaintiffs, the software having predicted how Naomi Prynne’s child will affect each of them in life-changing ways.

The greatest devastation in history. A secret that will alter humanity forever. Today, the true fight for survival begins. Deep within the remnants of the United States, Lyla Richards oversees a camp of 200 survivors. In a world where living is an everyday struggle and only through banding together can people survive, the arrival of the Unwelcome only made her job harder. Riley Quinn and Miles Jones have been raised by Lyla for the last five years. They are also one of the cursed: the children between the ages of 13 and 18 whom the Unwelcome kill on sight.

CONTENTS: Introduction; I Just Make Them Up, See; Someday; The Feeling of Power; Living Space; Satisfaction Guaranteed; The Last Question; Jokester; The Immortal Bard; Spell My Name With an "S"; The Ugly Little...

Josiah Stonewell dug his hands into the filthiest parts of my soul and molded a perfect little Walker. I don't know the exact moment I fell in love with him, but I do know that if anyone found out about our lingering stares, it would end his political career. Josiah's unexpected engagement has me squinting down the barrel of heartbreak, and to make matters worse; I find myself traded to Cyler Black and his leadership council in a distant Providence. Soon, Cyler and his team of passionate leaders start to feel like family, and I'm promised freedoms I never imagined were possible.

At the end of the twenty-first century, climate change and famine almost ended humanity—until the discovery of the Klujns, a barbaric, humanoid species with strangely colored eyes and even stranger abilities. Their crystal claws and bones fertilize barren soil, and their tender meat is a super-protein. Klujns are both humans’ saviors and natural-born enemies, meant to be hunted and used.

Fighting her way through the dark underbelly of civilization, Juliet Bianchi has become a top-tier mercenary with a heart of gold and a killer smile. A shadowy, high-priced operative embedded with high-tech AI, she goes by the moniker "Lucky," and the life she once led as a metal scrapper seems eons behind her. Now, armed with her very own formidable monoblade and fresh ink warning all others not to mess with her lest they become very dead, she's taking a step away from business to handle something personal.

A collection of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy short fiction selected by New York Times bestselling author of the Silo series Hugh Howey and series editor John Joseph Adams. “These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest...

Eco-terrorists unleash the worst attack the world has ever seen. Over 25,000 autonomous combat drones are released in Manhattan. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the entire island is evacuated and quarantined in just a few days' time. Ten years later, Manhattan is still empty of humans, with the exception of the salvage specialists of the most watched reality show in history: Zone War. Produced live and unedited, the show follows five teams of armored vehicle specialists who brave the active drones to recover lost riches and collect bounties on dead ones.

It is not impossible to rewrite history. In fact, when one computer runs the world, changing history happens faster. Those who were heroes have been labeled villains. The alien Melagorns and Dreth, once friends, are now competitors at best. The Regime works to instill loyalty to humanity. Loyalty to brotherhood. Loyalty to the state. Loyalty to the words preached every night. John Dunn fled into a radioactive wasteland, seeking death rather than work in the Regime. What he learns changes humanity forever.

It’s 2788 and only the "handicapped" live on Earth. Eighteen-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can't travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She's an ape, a throwback, but this is one ape girl who won't give in.

Imagine a world in which the hopeless and vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society. Imagine a world divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In that world lives Elimina Dubois, one of only 100 children selected as a social experiment by the Mainland government to be taken from their mothers in the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity. But when her Mainland mother dies when Elimina is just a teenager, Elimina finds herself alone, forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude, unsure of who she is and where she belongs.

A new recording of Ray Bradbury’s timeless classic Fahrenheit 451 narrated by Penn Badgley! Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its...

When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.

It's not until Dez's father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there's more to this boy - and her father's "law firm" - than she realized. Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation - an organization devoted to collecting "special" kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons - his entire life.