1984: 75th Anniversary

Editor’s note: In the years since this essay was first published, The Handmaid’s Tale has risen to new prominence: adapted by Hulu into an award-winning television series, and, in Fall 2019, expanded upon by the author with a followup novel, The Testaments, which is available in an exclusive B&N Book Club edition. It will be the […]

There are plenty of eye-catching numbers in the realms of speculative fiction. J.K. Rowling has sold the most copies of any book series: 450 million. Game of Thrones, much to HBO’s chagrin, is consistently the most pirated TV show ever: in a mere four-week period it was downloaded almost 1.6 million times. A few weeks back, John Scalzi netted […]

Dystopia is—ironically for something pretty terrible—disturbingly popular these days. While a good dystopian government has always been a fun way to depict our inevitably awful future (I patiently await my sexless utilitarian jumpsuit and dish of Soylent Green), there are often a lot of missing details. Like, for example, how can an incredibly ridiculous (but evil) government […]

Literature is powerful: books have inspired revolutions and renaissances, toppled kingdoms and changed the course of human existence. But books themselves aren’t dangerous—that is, unless you’re talking about any of the fictional books-within-a-book below. From the simply malicious to the deeply malevolent, all of them are definitely dangerous, and sometimes even deadly. Back To Top