What Dystopian Novel Best Predicted 2021?

Author Walter Kirn picks the dystopian novel that best predicted the world in 2021. And now the question is: how did these 20th century writers know how f***ed up we would become?

[usefulidiots]

What dystopian novel best predicted 2021?

[donbell]

E.M. Forster wrote a dystopian short story "The Machine Stops". Written before WW One it predicted the internet and doing everything without leaving your room. Food piped in along with air and music.

[DigitalDuelist]

The V for Vendetta graphic novel and even movie are a great picture of where we will be a couple presidents out.
Also, after half the country fallaciously calling Trump a facist for his entire term if we get a real fascist everybody will be burnt out onnthe term. Same goes for a figure like Hitler that I hope isn't in our future. The label has been abused so much it has lost any real efficacy in popular culture for describing an actual madman.

[marcuspeck]

This was good, but I was hoping to see a broader range of books/films/plays discussed than the big three -Orwell-Huxley-Bradbury. I've been reading quite a few dystopian novels recently, particularly Philip K. Dick, who everyone knows had some amazing insights among his scattergun plenitude, but also the largely forgotten Thomas M. Disch whose history of SF (he was also a critic and poet) impressed me when I wrote an honours thesis on my beloved Kurt Vonnegut.

[RickInMaryland]

"A Song for a New Day" by Sarah Pinsker. It takes place in a world 20 years after a pandemic. People aren't allowed to gather in crowds. People work from home virtually. Concerts and sporting events take place virtually. It came out in 2019 before COVID.

[criticalthought]

I have been saying... 'Make 1984 fiction again!'
In light of this interview, I suppose that I need to change it to... 'Make dystopian novels fiction again!'
Not near as catchy, I know. ;-)

If they divide us, we are conquered!,
j

[SlowGraffitiVideo]

Stand On Zanzibar. Blew my mind when I read it this past winter.

[AriesKJJ]

"A Boy And His Dog" is a great dystopian classic!

[hansmolders]

RUNNING MAN by Richard Bachman aka Steven King! In the end the protagonist, realizing he can't win, flies an airliner into the skyscraper of the all powerful State TV station...

[gfarrell]

1:15 "every teenager likes to think of themselves as the one who wouldn't burn the books" ...unfortunately, I think we're at the point where teenagers aren't reading books anymore. We don't even need to burn the books.

[johnsiman]

5:44 “They know they’re going into a kind of monastic period in which they are going to have to preserve knowledge.”

[dennismitchell]

I'm in the middle of a book called "Juniper Time", by Kate Wilhelm. Written in 1979, which is doing a good job of describing what I expect from 2030.

[hansmolders]

When GWBush, excuse me, Dick Cheney was Pres. I reread 1984 and highlighted passages that they used as their playbook!

[Gkuljian]

I thought of something frightening- Amazon courthouse. Or how about Chevron Sixth District Court of Appeal. I mean how far away is that? It would seem impossible.

[billyhughes]

I think Walter really nails the ratios of each novel relative to where we're at currently. Good stuff.

[aikitechniques]

make room make room (soylent green) got climate change spot on

[Larkinchance]

I use to read books in print and then give them away to someone who might also enjoy them. Today, I treasure them. I still share them but I hide them away thinking that they may suddenly disappear.
To hold a banned or a forbidden book can change your life.

[justinahole]

...am I the only one that made the connection between smart phones and the "screens" in 1984? I've been thinking for years that Orwell couldn't have imagined that we would hold them as status symbols.

[Phoenix]

I thought Matheson's "I Am Legend" rang true for me a lot this past year. The mindless hordes, the groupthink this past year -- it's been staggering.

[aichpvee]

The problem with 1984 is that he thought it was going to be communists running the dystopia, but as it happens, it was capitalists