What is the most dystopian AH work ever created?

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BeyondTheBorg

sampleswift said:
Why is fear, loathing ,gumbo so dark? I want to know how and why?
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It's basically a TL where the US suffers a USSR-style collapse over the 1970s-80s, in magnificently gruesome detail. The rest of the world is often even worse, with China becoming Cambodia*10^2, and Apartheid in South Africa ending in genocide. Every election is Bush v. Gore on steroids, leaders are insane ideologues, and the only country doing all that well is the Soviet Union, under "MBA Communism".
 
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The Lethargic Lett

The Lethargic Lett

Alan Moore has said the PoD for V For Vendetta is Labour winning in 1983, which leads to British unilateral nuclear disarmament. Britain goes on to survive a limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviets because they're not a target, but there's a fascist takeover in Britain and it's implied that most of the world has been destroyed. I don't know if it's the most dystopian, but it's up there if you examine the subtext.
 

sampleswift

The Lethargic Lett said:
Alan Moore has said the PoD for V For Vendetta is Labour winning in 1983, which leads to British unilateral nuclear disarmament. Britain goes on to survive a limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviets because they're not a target, but there's a fascist takeover in Britain and it's implied that most of the world has been destroyed. I don't know if it's the most dystopian, but it's up there if you examine the subtext.
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Really? That POD sounds ridiculous... If you're talking about nuclear apocalypse, the Fallout series (if Video games count) is also terrible because both sides (China and US) became irredeemable shortly before they wiped each other out.
Climate change/Global Warming apocalypse TLs could also count, although maybe have a "Most dystopian AH without an apocalypse-level event?"
 

Father Maryland

The Pharos war saga by Justin Coates. Their version of Earth was already very very dystopian (World War two had ended in 1950 and involved dozens of nukes being used on almost every continent. The Confederacy survived in a rump form in Texas which later more or less adopted Nazism. Among other things.) Then an extra dimensional invasion occurs across the world gradually grinding the US and mankind into dust horrifically. By the latest story the US's best hope is to literally sell our souls to what inspired Satan with the best hope being to create a world wide concentration camp ritually murdering millions to feed the dark god's insatiable hunger.

That's considered the ideal by that point. Losing is considered much much much worse. Basically mankind considers selling ourselves to something that makes Cthulhu look like a pansy our best remaining option.
 

Look More Closely Later

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books are pretty dystopian, but I'm not sure if you can classify a point of departure of 'universe where magic works, producing a race of demi-godlike reality-warping idiotic supremacists and bigots' as 'Alternate History'.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury seemed to me pretty dystopian when I read it a few years ago, but I don't remember how when it was set compares to when it was written. That one might qualify as 'speculative' rather than 'alternate'.
 
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IanIachimoe

Well to me, it's vivere militare est by rvbomally. And not just because of the lovecraftian elements, but also because that world's afterlife is a hellish dimension, where souls are tortured to the point of madness, and every life form on earth is tied to it.
 

rvbomally

IanIachimoe said:
Well to me, it's vivere militare est by rvbomally. And not just because of the lovecraftian elements, but also because that world's afterlife is a hellish dimension, where souls are tortured to the point of madness, and every life form on earth is tied to it.
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Souls are not tortured in VME's afterlife, at least not by necessity. The afterlife is just a desolate wasteland that has become a place of torture because the souls there choose to torture each other. As for madness, it's not the afterlife that does it. The very experience of death itself is so "painful" (though that word does not adequately describe how bad it is) that it causes madness the moment it happens.
 

IanIachimoe

rvbomally said:
Souls are not tortured in VME's afterlife, at least not by necessity. The afterlife is just a desolate wasteland that has become a place of torture because the souls there choose to torture each other. As for madness, it's not the afterlife that does it. The very experience of death itself is so "painful" (though that word does not adequately describe how bad it is) that it causes madness the moment it happens.
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Well even so, VME's afterlife is not a place you want to be in.
 
theg*ddam*hoi2fan

theg*ddam*hoi2fan

rvbomally said:
Souls are not tortured in VME's afterlife, at least not by necessity. The afterlife is just a desolate wasteland that has become a place of torture because the souls there choose to torture each other. As for madness, it's not the afterlife that does it. The very experience of death itself is so "painful" (though that word does not adequately describe how bad it is) that it causes madness the moment it happens.
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IanIachimoe said:
Well even so, VME's afterlife is not a place you want to be in.
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Makes me think of the comic/videogame Shadowman, where there is no Heaven or Hell, just Deadside, a rather unpleasant place physically but no torment by a higher power. Just...a place where everyone, good, evil or middle of the road, religious or irreligious, gets sent. And while Deadside doesn't torment the people there, and there doesn't seem to be a god or devil figure, various powers and souls there can do unpleasant stuff if they so desire. Also there's Zombies etc.

To quote the game:
Here the true darkness at the heart of all things is made real. What we see in death's dominion is as void as a dead man's gaze, as cold as the light from a dying star."
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