There ’s only one thing we make out for trusted about the future : It ’ll be eldritch , and you ca n’t really train for it . Just envisage trying to tell someone in 2000 how to prepare for life in 2011 . But fortuitously , there ’s one surefire way to stimulate yourself for another circle of next stupor : by reading a slew of heavy caustic remark , about citizenry pin down in weird and incomprehensible worlds .
So if you really desire to future - trial impression yourself , here are 10 satirical novels that could help .
Top image : Magrathea byMicrobot 23 on Deviant Art .
1 . Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace ’s masterpiece ingest place in a twisted dystopia where the calendar years are name after corporate products , and apocalyptic mental imagery is everywhere — admit inEschaton , a weird kind of tennis game that imitate nuclear state of war . Against this background of tyrannical weirdness , Wallace explore themes of dependency and ego - destruction , include the novel ’s probable protagonist , Hal , who stress to control his marijuana intake butwinds up becoming too muddled to speak . ( This is not a looter , it ’s in chapter one . ) And then there ’s the Entertainment — a movie so entertaining that people watch over it become ineffectual to mould or to do anything meaningful . It ’s one of those novel that ’s difficult to summarise , but when you become immersed in it , you emerge with a common sense that you ’re star into the heart of the intricate uncanny structure that wreck Hal Incandenza . At the very least , you might finish Infinite Jest with a bit more heightened knowingness of your own tendency to ego - destruct in the face of all the strangeness .
The Decemberists ’ New Music Video : A Scene from David Foster Wallace ’s Infinite Jest
2 . Cat Country by Lao She
Lao She is arguably one of China ’s outstanding novelists , although Cat Country is not his adept work — that honor belong to Rickshaw Boy / Camel Xiangzi . Still , Cat Country isoften called the first Chinese work of scientific discipline fiction , and it ’s got more than enough barbs and clever observations to make it worth read . In a nutshell , Cat Country ’s narrator travel to Mars , which he finds inhabited by a culture of computerized tomography , that ’s on the verge of collapse due to internal decadence and decades of abuse by outsider . It ’s a irony on thirties China , with its seemingly hopeless social problem and foreign predation , but it ’s actually a jolly universal look at being on the receiving death of imperialism . And how people who are persecute often make their situation bad with in - fighting and cluelessness , or else of press back effectively . ( Oh , and there ’s a plenty of stuff about why Formosan people choose to smoke opium , which was foisted on them by the British . ) One specially trenchant part : A group of leftists want to find a Modern bon ton free-base on the peasants and workers , “ but they did n’t have the brumous notion of what factory farm was , or what oeuvre was . ”
3 . Gridlock by Ben Elton
If you ’re an American , you might not hump who Elton is — but you ’ve probably admired his workplace , especially his piece of writing on Blackadder . And hisfirst three novelsform a sort of satiric scientific discipline fable trilogy , loosely focussed on environmental issues . Stark is about rich people plat to escape an Earth on the brink of destruction , in a fleet of rockets . This Other Eden is similarly about everybody moving into airtight domes to get away from the environmental ravaging . But the best of these environmentalist novels is in all probability Gridlock , which is about our propensity to lick the problem of dealings press … by building more road . A disabled discoverer bring up Geoffrey has create a new sort of pollution - free auto engine , and the car industry decides to have him killed before he can share it with anyone . These are not subtle novel — but they ’re more relevant than ever , especially since “ come through the future ” is tight related to “ solving environmental problems . ” And they ’re as queer as Blackadder .
mind The Deadly Robotic Coffee Pot !
4 . Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
There was a deal of incredibly silly talk late about how prescient this novel was , because it bode hooey like transparent denim and people being mean on Twitter . ( Despite the fact that we already had pellucid wear and people being mean on Twitter , when Shteyngart wrote it . ) besides , our economic collapse and the compulsion with function the demand of High Net Worth Individuals were already well afoot long before this novel was publish . But this novel does contain one of the best , and most darkly fishy , accounts of economical self - end , and what people are unforced to do to last in the bad potential condition . And it really is super pitiful .
5 . Make Room ! Make Room ! By Harry Harrison
Harrison ’s ultra - blue , way - demoralise novel about an overpopulated future world — a earthly concern with 7 billion the great unwashed in it ! — became the basis for Soylent Green , but the novel is more about the problems of overpopulation . Including pee shortages , pollution , rearing crime and riots . Not nearly as funny as some of the other Book on this list , or as Harrison ’s other Book , Make Room is still a great dark look at a world with too many multitude in it . For more on a world blend disturbed with overpopulation , and the subsequent oppression of the aged , check out Boomsday by Christopher Buckley . For a more upbeat look at an overpopulated earth , check out The World Inside by Robert Silverberg .
6 . Gulliver ’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
The original novel about culture cushion , from the satirist who yield us “ A Modest Proposal . ” ( Yes , Jack Black’shideous moviewas based on a book . ) Lemuel Gulliver travels around the man , encountering tiny little masses and giant hoi polloi , and a floating city of highly advanced but impractical people , and at last , a farming of horse - multitude . Along the elbow room , he take that human nature is inherently corrupted and that no company is ever perfect , and that everybody has their own weird belief and cultural disputes . Probably no other book can do more to organise you for futureshock than Gulliver ’s travel .
Gulliver ’s Travels will make you seasick in the cineplex
7 . blase of the Rings
One of the most successful parodies of all time , this Harvard Lampoon - author sendup of Tolkien ’s Lord of the Rings remains in print decade later — and it ’s a keen antidote to whatever the late “ struggle against ultimate evilness ” the mass in charge require you to take part in . Just try thinking of your culture ’s latest epical Hero of Alexandria as being bring up stuff like “ Dildo Bugger ” and you ’ll quickly realize how silly the whole thing is .
8 . Machine Man by Max Barry
Barry has made a career out of write trenchant novels about the evils of capitalist economy and corporation that become like unto nation state , with book like Jennifer Government and The Company . But with Machine Man , he combines an evil corporation with another theme — our tendency to augment ourselves with technology . It starts with bright phones and ends with put back most of our bodies with cybernetic spare parts — and Barry suggest that this technology may make us feel more devoid and self-governing at first , but eventually it ’ll make us the property of our corporal skipper , ineffective even to move without their permission . Because technology can be taken away , or remote - control by those in tycoon .
9 . War With the Newts by Karel Capek
Like Cat Country , this is another famous satiric scientific discipline fiction novel from the thirties , and it total from the man who gave us the Holy Scripture “ automaton . ” In War With the Newts , a sailor discovers a race of reasoning newts who can use pecker and learn new undertaking . He puts them to exploit shuck oyster , and soon they ’re being adopt around the world , doing more and more complex tasks , finally lead to vast underwater edifice projects . The human backwash rushes to give the newts more complex tools and arm — what could possibly go wrong ? Some have draw this Word of God as a metaphor for the rise of Nazism , but it has wide app program … include a discussion of human race ’ tendency to believe we can get something for nothing , and our avidity to destroy ourselves with the late shortcut to wealth .
10 . The Hitchhiker ’s Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams ’ masterwork start as a irony on bureaucracy — Arthur Dent ’s sign of the zodiac is going to be demolish by a traditionalist council , and then the same lot bechance the whole satellite , thanks to the hideous Vogons . But H2G2 becomes a much broader irony , coming to encompass the quest for significance in the universe and the true randomness of everything . This is the only novel which recite you how to carry on after the destruction of the entire major planet , which take a crap it vastly valuable for that reason alone . But like a luck of the leger on this tilt , it ’s also a tremendous satire on human nature , exposing all of our pettiness and idiocy . This book ( and really the whole series ) shows how our lives and deaths are ultimately futile … but then reveals what happens to us if we squeeze futility : we become like Marvin the Paranoid Android . And nobody wants that .
Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson and MaryKate Jasper .
BooksLord of the Rings
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