Top 5 Wednesday: Futuristic books

Happy Wednesday !

This week's Top 5 Wednesday theme is: futuristic books.

Here is a list of some of the books I loved - although "futuristic" is quite a vast term.

I couldn't order them in a special way.

Ready Player One, Ernest Cline

The Host, Stephenie Meyer

1984, George Orwell

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

Ready Player One features a world in which the main interest of the largest part of the population is a video game; when the owner of the game dies, a giant quest is organized in order to find the next owner. Of course, there is an organization trying to prevent anyone but them to get to the treasure, and this turns out to be really dangerous for the protagonist, both in the game and in his real life: he is in danger. 

In The Host, the Earth has been invaded by a parasitic alien race, known as the souls, which are meant to replace some humans, considered dangerous and too violent. When a soul is implanted, it replaces the host body's consciousness and memories. However, when Wanderer is implanted in Melanie's body, both of them start to communicate, and Melanie refuses to leave. 

Catching Fire, of course - I could have mentioned The Hunger Games but the second book is really my favourite of the trilogy - offers a dystopian world in which, after the destruction of the North American nations, the society is divided into 12 districts, according to the main area of activity & wealth of the people. The first one is the richest, most trained, closest to the Capitole - those in control of the whole system - when the 12th one is the poorest. In order to survive in District 12, people can get a bit of money from the Capitole in exchange for their name put in a lottery, The Hunger Games. 

1984... Do I really need to say something about this world? Just know that Big Brother is watching you. And, when in doubt, also remember that War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. 

The Handmaid's Tale is really hard to explain.  It is basically about a theocratic military dictatorship in which women are almost enslaved, they are totally devoid of their rights and must be devoted to men - some men, that are imposed to them.They are divided into casts, each having its particular role to play. But of course, like in any dictatorship (or dystopian/futuristic world, for that matter), they are dissidents, and the main protagonist, a Handmaid renamed Offred, does not know who to trust and what to believe.

Once again, these books are really different to each other, but they all present a world which really intrigued/scared me.

I wish I could have thought about "good" futuristic books, utopias more than dystopias, but these were really the ones that came to my mind. I guess it tells something about how we imagine the future...

Find more top 5's here.