• Animal Farm (1945) is George Orwell’s fable that explores the inevitable trajectory of revolutions. In the story, a group of animals rebels against their human farmer to establish their own government. The pigs, being the smartest, take charge, and the animals initially have high hopes as they draft their own bill of animal rights. However, these rights gradually diminish as the pigs start altering the rules.

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931) had a significant influence on Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. Huxley’s totalitarian state, set in London six centuries in the future, is somewhat less bleak than Orwell’s vision but equally oppressive. The residents are as powerless as those in Oceania. While Huxley’s prose and character development may lack the sophistication of Orwell’s, his novel is both humorous and captivating. In this society, a select few elite rulers use advanced technology to control individuals from birth. When the Savage, a primitive person from outside the society, enters, he challenges the superficial values of its citizens.

• This Perfect Day by Ira Levin (1970) presents another vision of a dystopian future where society’s values starkly contrast with contemporary norms. Similar to Brave New World, citizens use drugs to numb their pain and fears and are genetically engineered to be very alike. Those with genetic differences are more likely to feel discontent in this controlled society, which is overseen by a massive computer that dispenses mood-altering drugs.

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) narrates the story of Offred, a woman living in the oppressive future society of the Republic of Gilead, where women’s roles are severely restricted.

• Harrison Bergeron, a satirical story by Kurt Vonnegut, draws inspiration from Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. Harrison exists in a future totalitarian state where his high intelligence is deemed a disadvantage. To “correct” this “defect” and make Harrison as average as his peers, doctors plan to perform brain surgery. However, he is taken by an elite group that secretly controls society and given a choice: join the rulers and vanish from society or face lobotomy.

• We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924) also influenced Orwell’s 1984. This dystopian novel is set in the twenty-sixth century in a totalitarian state known as OneState. Ruled by a Big Brother-like figure called the Benefactor, this society schedules every citizen’s day down to the minute. The narrator, D-503, is the engineer behind a space probe named INTEGRAL and eagerly awaits the Great Operation—a lobotomy performed by the government to eliminate the last remnant of individuality: the imagination.