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You may think the world's already pretty bad. Maybe you think we already exist in a dystopian world, but after you read some of the best dystopian novels ever, you'll see just how much worse it can get.

Dystopian fiction exists in contrast to utopian works. Whereas utopias conceive an idyllic world, dystopias examine what happens when society breaks down. It's usually a subset of science-fiction where something that exists in the real world has been taken to the extreme, causing mass suffering for most of the population. Environmental degradation, police states, or even the complete absence of free will are common aspects of the genre, using the story at hand to explore a darker world and how humanity can still manage to shine thr

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