You are being watched.
Your every movement is being tracked, your every word recorded. Your spouse may be an informer, your children may be listening at your door, your best friend may be a member of the secret police. You are alone among thousands, among great crowds of the brainwashed, the well-behaved, the loyal. Productivity has never been higher, the media blares, and the army is ever triumphant. One wrong move, one slip-up, and you may find yourself disappeared -- swallowed up by a monstrous bureaucracy, vanished into a shadowy labyrinth of interrogation chambers, show trials, and secret prisons from which no one ever escapes. Welcome to the world of the dystopia, a world of government and society gone horribly, nightmarishly wrong.
What happens when civilization invades and dictates every aspect of your life? From 1984 to The Handmaid's Tale , from Children of Men to Bioshock , the dystopian imagination has been a vital and gripping cautionary force. Brave New Worlds collects the best tales of totalitarian menace by some of today's most visionary writers, including Neil Gaiman, Paolo Bacigalupi, Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
When the government wields its power against its own people, every citizen becomes an enemy of the state. Will you fight the system, or be ground to dust beneath the boot of tyranny?
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Familiar classics by such luminaries as Shirley Jackson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and J.G. Ballard rub shoulders with new standouts in this dark anthology of 33 dystopian futures and alternate worlds. In Joseph Paul Haines's "Ten with a Flag," a government uses confusion to manipulate the governed. Sarah Langan's "Independence Day" shows a tyrannical future U.S. through a teenager's eyes. Matt Williamson's "Sacrament" offers the torturer's perspective on his "art." Adam-Troy Castro's "Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs" asks how much of our souls we would surrender for nine days of guaranteed happiness plus one of horror. Grinding inevitability runs through Vylar Kaftan's interactive "Civilization." Most of the stories are bleak, many are hopeless, and all serve as powerful warnings of what we may let ourselves become. (Feb.)
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Review
"Familiar classics by such luminaries as Shirley Jackson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and J.G. Ballard rub shoulders with new standouts in this dark anthology of 33 dystopian futures and alternate worlds. Most of the stories are bleak, many are hopeless, and all serve as powerful warnings of what we may let ourselves become." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An excellent roundup of high-class writing talent, all offering their interpretations of dystopian possibilities that should stick with the reader long after they finish the last story." --Examiner.com [5 out of 5 stars]
"One of the best primers of dystopian literature you'll find on shelves today. A perfect blend of classic and contemporary short stories about government control, technological subjugation and corporate espionage, each story offers a unique position on how we're so apt to allow entities to control us... for our own good, of course. ... Once I started I found I couldn't put it down. Once again, it would seem that editor John Joseph Adams knows how to pick 'em. ... [Night Shade Books has] hit another home run with Brave New Worlds." --The Quiet Earth
"A simply magnificent anthology of short-form dystopian fiction that features dozens of cacotopian classics. And, as has come to be expected with any Adams anthology, there are no weak links - not a one. Every single one of the 33 stories included in Brave New Worlds is a standout work. It's an all-star line-up of dystopian gems from front to back. ... This just isn't a great anthology, it's one that I will cherish forever and undoubtedly read again and again." --Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble.com
"It doesn't happen very often that you find an anthology that's perfectly executed from start to finish, but Brave New Worlds is exactly that. The stories in this collection are science fiction in the truest sense of the word, starting from an often painful sociological premise and extrapolating it to the most private and emotional aspects of our lives. ... You simply won't find a finer anthology than Brave New Worlds." --FantasyLiterature.com