Dystopian
22 stories
Greener Grass by MichaelJSullivan
Greener Grass
MichaelJSullivan
  • Reads 50,982
  • Votes 483
  • Parts 2
HE WANTED TO ESCAPE HIS PROBLEMS. HE WANTED TO SEE THE FUTURE. HE NEVER CONSIDERED WHAT THE FUTURE WANTED. Confronted with suffering a painful death from cancer, Dan Sturges, a retired Ford’s engineer, foregoes treatments to try an idea of his own. After reading a theoretical article in Scientific American on time displacement, Dan builds a time machine in his garage. With nothing to lose but a few months of pain, Dan pins his hopes on a future where cancer might have been cured, or at least a quicker death by electrocution. How could he have known that what happens after he presses the button is more shocking than the eighteen car batteries he connected himself to? Greener Grass is a science fiction short story of 5,600 words by Michael J. Sullivan, author of the fantasy books of The Riyria Revelations and the Riyria Chronicles. This short story was the seed that grew into his full-length novel, Hollow World published in April 2014 by Tachyon Publishing. While the ideas are similar, the two worlds depicted are quite different. In Greener Grass, the world was created to provide a "twilight zone" twist. In Hollow World, the future provides an environment that may be utopian or dystopic depending on the readers perceptions.
RESURGENCE by HarneetBajwa
RESURGENCE
HarneetBajwa
  • Reads 549,163
  • Votes 19,354
  • Parts 46
Humanity’s desire to be immortal is finally fulfilled when Stuart and Nick, two mischievous yet brilliant young men, figure out a way to reverse age. Over the next few years, they sell life to the aging population and build Phoenix Corporation: one of the biggest companies in the world. With Life Centers across the globe, people can prolong life but death still remains unconquered. When an accident at a Life Center throws the city of Hamilton into chaos, nothing stops the spreading death and madness. Stuart and Nick struggle to find the real reason behind the mysterious phenomenon. Will humanity pay the ultimate price for evading death?
Homeland by CoryDoctorow
Homeland
CoryDoctorow
  • Reads 556,410
  • Votes 5,087
  • Parts 25
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -- In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state. A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier. Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can’t admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He’s surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He’s not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he’s gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’re used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want. Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.
Skyward - (NaNoWriMo 2013 Novel) by NicholasQuill
Skyward - (NaNoWriMo 2013 Novel)
NicholasQuill
  • Reads 7,593
  • Votes 262
  • Parts 31
This is a story I wrote the majority of daily, as part of NaNoWriMo 2013. The concept for the story is one that I have been considering for a while. Earlier this year, I wrote about 3000 words on the subject as part of our Wattpad HQ Writeathon, and that work can be found under "Wattpad Writeathon 2013: Skyward". However, I wanted to start fresh for NaNoWriMo, so I have created this story to capture my progress through November.
Human Resources by ScottWalldren
Human Resources
ScottWalldren
  • Reads 16,623
  • Votes 864
  • Parts 68
Inamorata by irishrose
Inamorata
irishrose
  • Reads 4,895,265
  • Votes 92,574
  • Parts 41
Nightingale is human - or would be, had it not been for the manner of her creation. Genetically engineered and grown to adulthood in a lab, she was created, not born. Why? For the sole purpose of the entertainment of rich men as one of the many Inamoratas in the bordello business . Beautiful, elegant, a superb dancer and an even better singer, she is the perfect lover for any man. Perfect, that is, except for her personality - the one thing you can't engineer.
THE GRID RE-PUBLIC by JesseDavidThe
THE GRID RE-PUBLIC
JesseDavidThe
  • Reads 3,018
  • Votes 71
  • Parts 2
The "Black Swan", thats what they call me on the news reports; rebel, terrorist, murderer. The year is 2087 and governments are the things kids study in history class. The entire world is run by private organizations like Oplex and the Basin Corporation. There are no wars, no disease, no famine, no crime. Or at least thats what we were meant to believe. The truth was far from what we could have ever imagined...
Mute by Bambi_Rivers
Mute
Bambi_Rivers
  • Reads 90,448
  • Votes 3,201
  • Parts 8
Music:ON World:OFF Welcome to Syrus. Please pick up your complimentary pair of headphones at the gates. Plug them into your mandatory devices and skip to track four. Listen and enjoy. Cor's world is filled with notes and pitch and tone. Twenty three hours of the day she is hooked to the music mandated by the Serial Seven, Syrus' elite council. It is essentially every teenager's dream: Hit a button and drown the world out. But what happens when the music stops?
Frightened Boy by ScottKelly
Frightened Boy
ScottKelly
  • Reads 1,530,362
  • Votes 7,409
  • Parts 33
A young man is caught in a battle between existential terrorists and a paranoid populace over the last metropolis in America. Our hero must decide whether to destroy or salvage the last bastion of civilization. A gritty dystopian thriller (think Hunger Games meets the Matrix.)
Dust by RiverSwensen
Dust
RiverSwensen
  • Reads 59,980
  • Votes 2,333
  • Parts 14
Kyle's already dismal life takes a turn for the worst when her colony is attacked by Creatures; the cannibalistic scraps of humanity left after a plague wiped out the majority of Earth. Accidently freeing a captured wild boy in her haste to survive the bloodbath, she acquires an odd ally. The pair set off into The Waste, forming a strained friendship as their worlds clash together with unyielding force.