Dystopian Science Fiction

When a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strikes Earth, modern life ends in an instant. Power grids fail. Communication collapses. Transportation halts. Within hours, the world descends into chaos—and the fragile threads of civilization begin to snap. What follows is a rapid descent into apocalyptic turmoil as society unravels and survival becomes a daily battle. When the world falls apart, it's not the heroes who rise—it's the unexpected.

The world is in ruins. Scattered pockets of humanity rule over their own territory, and by the 24th century, a merciless political group known as the Party has seized control of the nation through military force. They'll never let that power go. Party soldiers patrol the streets around the clock, and the citizens are watched day and night by cameras and drones. Freedom is dead, but from the darkness comes a glimmer of light - a hope of overthrowing the vicious regime.

The Life Engineered begins in the year 3594, when humanity is little more than a memory, a legend of the distant past - destined to reappear. Capeks, a race of artificial creatures originally created by humans, have inherited the galaxy and formed a Utopian civilization built on the shared goal of tirelessly working to prepare for their makers' return.

Ten teenagers broke behavioral law. Sentenced to be reeducated on the moon of Jerem, they were placed in stasis on the automated ship Phetteron for their six day journey. They never reached their destination. Thrown off course by a computer malfunction, the Phetteron is damaged in an asteroid belt and crash lands on the uninhabited ice planet of Valkrys.

"De tous les carrefours importants, le visage à la moustache noire vous fixait du regard. BIG BROTHER VOUS REGARDE, répétait la légende, tandis que le regard des yeux noirs pénétrait les yeux de Winston... Au loin, un hélicoptère glissa entre les toits, plana un moment, telle une mouche bleue, puis repartit comme une flèche, dans un vol courbe. C'était une patrouille qui venait mettre le nez aux fenêtres des gens. Mais les patrouilles n'avaient pas d'importance. Seule comptait la Police de la Pensée."

Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of 20th-century literature—a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.

They took everything away from him. To save the lives of his mother and sister, Vaughan traded his own to serve as a conscripted soldier. The year is 5034, and for the last five years the GUILD Republic has fought a grueling war of attrition with the aliens of the Thriaxian Kingdom. Forced to take on a new name and memories that are not his own, Vaughan is thrown headlong into the Terran war machine to become a Titan: an elite soldier tasked to pilot the GUILD’s most powerful weapon, a Xenomech.

He thought he was at rock bottom. Then the world blew up. Now, he’s the only one that can save the city. But it may take more than he has to give . . . Detective Kurt Weller has been framed, shamed, and beaten. And now he wakes up to the end of the world. Bombs are dropping, and dead people are trying to eat him.

Five years after a pneumonic plague killed two-thirds of the world's population, army veteran Marcus Battle is isolated. He's alone with his guns, his food, and the graves of his wife and child. Unaware of the chaos that's befallen everything outside of his central Texas ranch land, Marcus lives a Spartan life. If anyone steps onto his property, he shoots first and never asks questions. But when a woman in distress, chased by marauders, seeks asylum, Marcus has a decision to make.

For dinosaurs, it was a big rock. For humans: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). When the Earth is hit by the greatest CME in recorded history (several times larger than the Carrington Event of 1859), the combined societies of the planet's most developed nations struggle to adapt to a life thrust back into the Dark Ages. In the United States, the military scrambles to speed the nation's recovery on multiple fronts including putting down riots, establishing relief camps, delivering medical aid, and bringing communication and travel back on line. Just as a real foothold is established in retaking the skies (utilizing existing commercial aircraft supplemented by military resources and ground control systems), a mysterious virus takes hold of the population, spreading globally over the very flight routes that the survivors fought so hard to rebuild.

When Lyric Walker was 14 years old, her life was turned upside down when she witnessed a world-changing event - the arrival of the Triton, a five-nation race of warrior merpeople who walked out of the sea and camped on the beaches of modern-day Coney Island. Suddenly her neighborhood was home to a new minority group numbering in the tens of thousands. But the Triton's arrival also revealed a shocking family secret: Her own mother was a mermaid.

Imagine a London where magic is real...real, but feared. This is Eliza Braxton's London, and she has always accepted her place in it gladly. As one of the Riftborn, her magic has relegated her to the servant class, where she dutifully serves as the lady's maid in one of the most powerful households in the country. There, she uses her remarkable powers of persuasion to keep Elder Hallewell's rebellious daughter in the path to an arranged match of power and prosperity. Eliza has never questioned her loyalty...until now.

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.

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will. Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father.

Juliet Bianchi was once just another working drone, struggling to survive in a world where megacorporations reigned, information was power, and that power was worth killing for. Then she stumbled upon a kidnapping gone wrong and ended up with a stolen AI chip that took her from the bottom of the barrel to a top-tier realm of mercs, freelancers, and assorted unsavory folk.

Saff, a determined new doctor in the first year of her internship, had clawed her way out of a tumultuous past, only to be dragged back into it when the zombie outbreak hits. Forced to join her estranged father and his band of raiders, she's confronted with the harsh reality that desperation can make monsters out of anyone—even her.

A deadly virus has been unleashed. A virus so vicious that it reduces the infected to a terrifying version of themselves that could lead to the end of our race as we know it. Elaina has been identified as the point of transmission and the reason for the chaos and havoc. She created the virus and let it out. Now, more than just the infected would like to see her head served up on a platter.

When Lady Mae turns eighteen, she’ll inherit her mother’s ghastly job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty criminals as payment for their petty crimes. But then their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and there in the living room they murder her mother for refusing to butcher a child. Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her gruesome job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother.

With enemies closing in on every side, the survivors of Fall Creek find themselves facing impossible odds. Do they flee for their lives? Or, do they defend their town and risk losing it all? Some things are worth fighting for, even dying for. This may be their last stand. When the country goes dark, ordinary people find themselves facing the end of the world as they know it.

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.