Top 100 Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Books

Explore the top 100 Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction books on SimilarBooks. Discover stories set in societies transformed by oppression, collapse, disaster, war, environmental change or other catastrophic events. These books often examine survival, power, freedom and the consequences of choices made before or after civilisation is fundamentally changed.

The books on this page are ranked using SimilarBooks popularity data based on reader activity on the site. The ranking can change over time as readers discover and view different books. Each title includes information about the book and author, together with its genre and subgenre where available, and a link to discover similar books.

Use this list to discover popular dystopian & apocalyptic fiction books and then explore related titles through SimilarBooks. The individual book pages provide further recommendations, making it easier to find books with similar themes, subjects and styles.

📘 The Maze Runner

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he's not alone. When the lift's doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade--a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls. Just like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they got to the Glade.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The Stand

One man escapes from a biological weapon facility after an accident, carrying with him the deadly virus known as Captain Tripps, a rapidly mutating flu that - in the ensuing weeks - wipes out most of the world's population.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Station Eleven

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of "King Lear." Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Wool

They live beneath the earth in a prison of their own making. There is a view of the outside world, a spoiled and rotten world, their forefathers left behind. But this view fades over time, ruined by the toxic airs that kill any who brave them. So they leave it to the criminals, those who break the rules, and who are sent to cleaning.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The Lathe of Heaven

“The Lathe of Heaven” ; 1971 ( Ursula Le Guin received the 1973 Locus Award for this story) George Orr has a gift – he is an effective dreamer: his dreams become reality when he wakes up. He is aware of his past and present, two or more sets of memories, although the people around him are only aware of the current reality.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Golden Son

"With shades of The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown's genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Swan Song

An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war. He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan -- and destroy her.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Severance

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The Children of Men

"The year is 2021, and the human race is - quite literally - coming to an end. Since 1995 no babies have been born, because in that year all males unexpectedly became infertile. Great Britain is ruled by a dictator, and the population is inexorably growing older.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Adulthood Rites

The second book in the Lilith's Brood trilogy, this story takes place years after the arrival of Oankali aliens in the first book. Now, the Oankali have established some colonies on Earth, where they live and breed with humans.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 1985

Ingenious, chilling and darkly comic, 1985 combines a devastating critique of Orwell's 1984 with a terrifying vision of the future. As memorable as A Clockwork Orange, it is as powerful and unsettling as anything Burgess has written. First published in 1978, its thoughts and ideas still hold very true today.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Year One

"It began on New Year's Eve. The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed--and more than half of the world's population was decimated. Where there had been order, there was now chaos.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Slapstick

The book explores one of Vonnegut's favorite recurring themes, which is his belief in our need to belong extended families and how they would be an adequate, larger and more useful substitute for biological ones.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Trail of lightning

"While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters. Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Fallout Equestria

Fallout. With ponies! Set in an alternate future, one pony must learn to survive in a blasted, poisoned land... and possibly, with the aid of friends made along the way, bring new light into the darkness of post-apocalyptic Equestria.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Ashes

Alex, a resourceful seventeen-year-old running from her incurable brain tumor, Tom, who has left the war in Afghanistan, and Ellie, an angry eight-year-old, join forces after an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky and kills most of the world's population, turning some of those who remain into zombies and giving the others superhuman senses.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Hollow

The Zolarian colony is endangered. Parasitic bugs have infected thousands, turning them into cannibal fiends. The only cure is hidden under Area 51. Ronan, leader of the Zolarian army, is tasked with finding it. Earth is the last place he wants to be, but his orders are clear. Eradicate all humans. Make Earth the Zolarians new home.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The invasion of the Tearling

With each passing day, Kelsea Glynn is growing into her new responsibilities as Queen of the Tearling. By stopping the shipments of slaves to the neighboring kingdom of Mortmesne, she crossed the Red Queen, a brutal ruler whose power derives from dark magic, who is sending her fearsome army into the Tearling to take what is hers.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Wool omnibus

"Welcome to the silo ... Thousands of them have lived underground. They've lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The Wild Shore

2047: and for sixty years America has been quarantined after a devastating nuclear attack. Seventeen-year-old Henry wants to help make America great again. Like it was before all the bombs went off. But for the people of Onofre Valley, on the coast of California, just surviving is challenge enough.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Divergent

"Experience the making of the Divergent movie in this lush, oversize volume featuring more than a hundred and fifty full-color photos from the film, including many that have never been seen before.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Green

As foretold by ancient prophets, an apocalypse destroyed Earth during the twenty-first century. But two thousand years later Elyon set upon the earth a new Adam. This time, however, he gave humanity an advantage. What was once unseen became seen. It was good and it was called Green. But the evil Teeleh bided his time in a Black Forest.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 The Dreamers

In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Memory of Water

Maailmasta on loppumassa vesi. Suunnattoman katastrofin - ehkä ilmastonmuutoksen, ehkä jonkin muun - läpikäynyt ihmiskunta sinnittelee veden vähyyden ja sen säännöstelyä hallitsevan diktatuurin vallan alla. Vain kaatopaikoille hautautunut teknologia ja teemestarien sukupolvien ajan pitämät päiväkirjat muistuttavat entisistä ajoista.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The Wall

Un muro lungo centinaia di chilometri è stato innalzato attorno alla Gran Bretagna. Serve a tenere fuori gli Altri, le moltitudini che arrivano dal mare a caccia di un lembo di terra asciutta, al riparo dal cambiamento climatico che ha modificato la geografia del pianeta.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Under a Graveyard Sky

Steve Smith is a history teacher who is teaching his family how to prepare for disaster and to make it fun for his two daughters, part of the training is preparation for a zombie apocalypse. Then he gets an emergency text message from his brother, a security expert, and realizes that the zombie training might come in handy.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Kalki

Is the ex GI posing as Kalki, an ancient Hindu diety, running an international drug ring or bringing about the destruction of the world?

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Early Riser

Every Winter, the human population hibernates. During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and devoid of human activity. Well, not quite.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Red Clocks

In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 California

"The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The compound

After his parents, two sisters, and he have spent six years in a vast underground compound built by his wealthy father to protect them from a nuclear holocaust, fifteen-year-old Eli, whose twin brother and grandmother were left behind, discovers that his father has perpetrated a monstrous hoax on them all.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Shovel Ready

Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, and before the city became a blown-out shell of its former self. Now he’s a hitman.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Void Star

Although the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, it's still a good time to be in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Down to a sunless sea

A collapsed economy and an increasingly savage society were causing thousands to abandon America. Captain Jonah Scott was a pilot, hired to fly some lucky refugees to London. But once in the air, nuclear war broke out, and Scott became responsible for the entire human race!

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Logan's run

A future world ruled by youth, where life ends at 21. If you try to escape this fate and run, you are pursued by Sandmen, the hired guns who enforce the "death at 21" rule. Our hero, Logan, is a Sandman. And he decides to run.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The book of Joan

"In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet's now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Pure

In a post-apocalyptic world, Pressia, a sixteen-year-old survivor with a doll's head fused onto her left hand meets Partridge, a "Pure" dome-dweller who is searching for his mother, sure that she has survived the cataclysm.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Cryptos

Wohin gehen wir, wenn wir nirgendwo mehr hinkönnen? Kerrybrook ist Janas Lieblingswelt: Ein idyllisches Fischerdorf mit viel Grün und geduckten Häuschen. Es gibt Schafe, gemütliche Pubs und vom Meer her weht ein kühler Wind. Manchmal lässt Jana es regnen.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 The Disaster Tourist

Welcome to the desert island of Mui, where a paid vacation to paradise is nothing short of a disaster in this “mordantly witty novel [that] reads like a highly literary, ultra–incisive thriller (Refinery29). Jungle is a cutting–edge travel agency specializing in tourism to destinations devastated by disaster and climate change.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 After the flare

"A catastrophic solar flare reshapes our world order as we know it - in an instant, electricity grids are crippled, followed by devastating cyberattacks that paralyze all communication. With America in chaos, former NASA employee Kwesi Bracket works at the only functioning space program in the world, which just happens to be in Nigeria.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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📘 Suicide club

"In this debut set in near future NYC--where lives last 300 years and the pursuit of immortality is all-consuming--Lea must choose between her estranged father and her chance to live forever. Lea Kirino is a "Lifer," which means that a roll of the genetic dice has given her the potential to live forever--if she does everything right.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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📘 Before she sleeps

In modern, beautiful Green City, the capital of South West Asia, gender selection, war and disease have brought the ratio of men to women to alarmingly low levels. The government uses terror and technology to control its people, and women must take multiple husbands to have children as quickly as possible.

Genre: Dystopian & Apocalyptic Fiction Subgenre: Dystopian Fiction

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