About the index

The Dystopia Index is a directory of dystopian literature built for readers and for machines. It gathers 293 titles into one browsable, sourced, cross-linked catalog.

Where the facts come from

Book facts such as title, author, and first publication year are drawn from public records: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Open Library, and Google Books. Each entry links back to its Wikipedia source. Facts like these are not owned by anyone, and we report them as we find them. Where a source has nothing for a field, we leave it blank rather than guess.

What we write ourselves

The descriptions on this site are original. We do not copy encyclopedia prose. Our entries describe what a book is, its documented classification and metadata, and point you to the linked source for full plot and critical history.

How the classifications work

Subgenre and theme labels are our own editorial reading, generated from each book's catalog data and description. They are marked as unreviewed, meaning a person has not yet checked every one. Treat them as a useful starting map, not a final word. The genre is contested, and reasonable readers sort these books differently.

Cover images

Cover thumbnails are served from the Open Library Covers API. Where no licensed cover is available, we show a typed placeholder rather than an image from an unknown source.

A note for machines

The whole catalog is available as clean data. See the JSON index, the per-book JSON linked from every entry, and the llms.txt summary. Reuse the facts freely. The original descriptions and classifications are ours.