I agree. Brunner got most things right. The significant one he didn’t was the downsizing of computer processing so we can all have a very capable computer in our pocket. I’ve re-read this a number of times and it’s always fresh.
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I prefer The Windup Girl but The Water Knife is also good.
I also enjoyed the other books in the same world as The Windup Girl.
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Especially if you like tennis. Wallace couldn’t imagine streaming, and we passed the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment several years back.
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Got it, got it, want it, want it, want it, want it, want it, want it, got it, got it.
ETA: Got it, got it, got it, want it, want it, want it, want it, want it, got it, got it.
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Who could have predicted The Entertainment on YouTube? And I think 2020 is the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.
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J. G. Ballard. Especially The Drowned World,
the first sentence of which is priceless (especially since the novel was written nearly 60 years ago): “Soon it would be too hot”.
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May I suggest “The Book of the Unnamed Midwife” by Meg Ellison? (It won the 2014 Philip K Dick award.) A nurse midwife makes her way through a world decimated by a disease that kills women and children, making childbirth deadly for mother and infant. She saves who she can by hoarding, stealing, and giving away birth control. Feminist dystopian fiction at its best. 
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Stand on Zanzibar is an excellent book, but A Canticle for Liebowitz is a science-fiction classic.
Surprised no one has mentioned Harry Harrison’s Make Room, Make Room! or any of William Gibson’s Sprawl novels (of which Neuromancer is clearly the most known, but I’m partial to Mona Lisa Overdrive).
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Jack London’s The Iron Heel too.
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Love this book, but it doesn’t give you the opportunity to wake up from it–it’s too close to our own new reality.
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To give me hope: That I’ll live long enough to piss on Trump’s grave.
Imagine how gratifying that will be.
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Water Knife is a great read. Also liked his Ship Breaker series as a dystopian read although that was much more YA
Excellent recommendation! I re-read it once every three years or so. Quick read but very thought-provoking.
Thanks for all of the recommendations. For some odd reason this is one of my favorite genres. Lots of new material here to dig into!!!
On the Beach by Neville Shute. 1957 novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne, Australia as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war a year earlier.
Both good reads, but I’m partial to Stand on Zanzibar myself.
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In the same vein: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Although, maybe this starts to get into alternate history rather than dystopian fiction. I’m not sure where one draws that distinction.
I would like to recommend American War by Omar El Akkad. The setting is late 21st Century. The US is in a second civil war over the banning of fossil fuels in response to climate change. And a centerpiece of the conflict has been biological weapons. Ergo, the storyline is a confluence of climate disaster and pandemic stories.
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My recommendation is Ben H.Winters’ Last Policeman trilogy: The Last Policeman, Countdown City and World Of Troubles.
They are beautifully written and very entertaining. The first one opens in a time where an asteroid has been discovered that will hit Earth on a particular day. There is no way to deflect or prevent it. Things are starting to fall apart but the protagonist is a newly minted police detective who wants to investigate a murder.
The trilogy is very dark and left me thinking about it for days after I finished each of the novels. Maybe they are too much of a downer for these days but I will recommend them nonetheless.
http://benhwinters.com/books/
Ben Winters is also the author of a couple of fairly popular pastiches like “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” and “Android Karenina”
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What I call the Jon Brunner “dystopian trilogy” of Stand On Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up and Shockwave Rider are all brilliant works. I haven’t read them in years but in my mind they hold up well for late 60s / early 70s views of the future world
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