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Your Utopia

Bora Chung2024

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Stand on Zanzibar

    John Brunner1968

    A fragmented portrait of an overpopulated 2010. The story uses news feeds and slogans to track a spy and a student in a corporate-run world.

    Same sardonic register, still dystopian

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Denser prose

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  • Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace1996

    A sprawling narrative centered on a tennis academy, a halfway house, and a lethal film. The text includes hundreds of pages of detailed endnotes.

    Same sardonic register, still dystopian

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  • Nova Express

    William S. Burroughs1964

    An experimental narrative uses the cut-up technique to depict a war between intergalactic criminals and the police. It is a collage of imagery.

    Same sardonic register

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  • Star Maker

    Olaf Stapledon1937

    A narrator travels through space and time to observe the birth and death of civilizations across the universe.

    sardonic → elegiac, still speculative fiction

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To recover

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  • Sea of Greed

    Clive Cussler2018

    Kurt Austin investigates the destruction of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The trail leads to a billionaire with a plan to end the oil age.

    sardonic → propulsive

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  • Modern Romance

    Aziz Ansari2015

    A comedian and a sociologist analyze how technology and culture have changed dating. It uses data and interviews to compare eras.

    sardonic → playful

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  • Building a Second Brain

    Tiago Forte2022

    A guide to a digital organization system designed to store and retrieve ideas, notes, and information for long-term projects.

    sardonic → earnest

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Faster

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  • Ready Player One

    Ernest Cline2008

    A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

    sardonic → propulsive

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  • Red Rising

    Pierce Brown2014

    A laborer on Mars discovers his caste is being lied to and undergoes surgery to infiltrate the ruling elite. He joins a brutal war games academy.

    sardonic → propulsive, still dystopian

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  • All Systems Red

    Martha Wells2017

    A self-aware security android hacks its own governor module to watch soap operas while protecting a team of scientists on a distant planet.

    sardonic → wry

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Slower

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  • Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

    Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

    An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

    sardonic → meditative

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    sardonic → bleak, still dystopian

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  • Gödel, Escher, Bach

    Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

    An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

    sardonic → playful

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-2

Heavier

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  • The Testament of Jessie Lamb

    Jane Rogers2011

    A teenager decides to volunteer for a medical program that will end her life to save humanity from a biological catastrophe.

    sardonic → earnest, still dystopian

    pace0·prose-1·bleak+1

  • Watchmen

    Alan Moore1986

    Retired masked vigilantes investigate the murder of a former teammate. The story takes place in an alternate 1985 on the brink of nuclear war.

    sardonic → bleak, still dystopian

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+1

  • A Clockwork Orange

    Anthony Burgess1962

    A teenage gang leader is imprisoned and subjected to state-mandated psychological conditioning. The story is told in a slang called Nadsat.

    Same sardonic register, still dystopian

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1