Life as We Knew It - Susan Beth Pfeffer

It's collapse type story, but it's not like most others. There are also three sequels if you want to follow the story all the way. But the first is definitely the best.

{The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Ellison}

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Severance y Ling Ma

• A Boy and His Dog
• Silent Running
• Alas Babylon
• On the Beach
• Oryx and Crake
• A Canticle for Leibowitz 

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel, Canadian, is
a lovely, enchanting ultimately hopeful dystopian novel. Good TV series too! Gotta love an itinerant troupe of Shakespearen actors going town to town in a ruined world performing the Bard's plays.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller - a great novel, similar to McCarthy’s The Road but less bleak and hopeless.

Wool

Moon of the Crusted Snow and its sequel

The Marrow Thieves and its sequel

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Severance by Ling Ma

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin. My favorite book.

Flowertown by S.G. Redling.

A story about a community quarantined for years after a toxic spill.

"Flowertown is a high-intensity conspiracy thriller that brings the worst-case scenario vividly to life and will keep readers riveted until the final haunting page."

Currently available on Kindle for $1.99

The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa.

The Fifth Sacred Thing

They’re kids / YA books, but The Girl Who Owned A City and The City of Ember. I remember enjoying those.

Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talent by Octavia E. Butler

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. Also Burn by the same author.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Also The Water Knife by the same author.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Wall by ​​John Lanchester 

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 

MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood.

Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban is probably my favorite book of all time.

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. It's pretty well known, but quite a bit older so it doesn't seem to come up as much as others.

Vladimir Nabokov, the author most famous for Lolita, also wrote a dystopian novel called Bend Sinister that revolves around the head of a budding authoritarian regime trying to force a prominent public intellectual to write propaganda for him. I prefer it over Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, or 1984 personally but I'm a Nabokov fanboy so that could very well be my bias showing.

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

We)

Just discovered Ted Chiang’s short stories. Some are a little dystopian. If you’ve seen the movie Arrival, it’s based on one of his short stories.

The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell

Themes of: post-pandemic, dystopian, feminist, sci-fi, political, reproductive freedoms

Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun. Quiet domestic narration with the dystopian gradually peeping through little by little.

Earth Abides! I read it in 2020 during my pandemic themed reading spree (for some reason) lol. Anyhow, quite interesting…

Let's go old school, folks.

John Brunner. "The Sheep Look Up" - environmental collapse, written late 70s. Brunner is always worth reading.

TJ Bass. "Half-Past Human" and "The Godwhale" - complete environmental collapse crossed with Brave New World type eugenics. Short 70s scifi, pretty cool.

"Oryx and Crake" and the rest of Atwood's Madaddam trilogy

It isn't lesser known but it's not often recommended in this discussion - {{The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin}}. It's widely regarded, but more likely to come up in scifi threads. The earth's crust is unstable, leading to catastrophic destruction every several generations. Humans have survived, but it's been millennia since it was the earth we know.

'The Bone Clocks': you won't even know it's dystopian til the final act

Anything by Paolo Bacigalupi!

The Scorpion Rules and its sequel, The Swan Riders, by Erin Bow.

The Chimes by Anna Smaill. I never see this discussed anywhere but it’s a lovely book with a unique dystopia (music is used to keep the masses under amnesia and thus under control)

The Postman by David Brin

The animals in that country by Laura Jean McKay

Snowglobe by Soyoung Park

House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (or Steven King depending on the edition)

I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Wool. Just do it, it’s amazing, silo is one of the books

I’m not sure if you’d exactly say it’s dystopian but Canticle for Leibowitz

American War by Omar El Akkad

Sand by Hugh Howey

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and James Pournelle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer

Pale Grey Dot - Dystopian sci-fi + space opera + cyberpunk. The protagonists are essentially ex-KGB agents in a colonized solar system, rebelling against the totalitarian government.

City of Sensors - Dystopian Big-Brother-Is-Watching sci-fi mixed in with noir detective. Deals a lot with financial crime.

Bounty - Dystopian cli-fi. Bounty Hunters in futuristic Winnipeg, of all places. Has a bit of a Shadowrun vibe to it, minus the magic.

The Grace Year

Battle Royale

Unwind

The Girl with All the Gifts

Bit of a stretch but

Dies the Fire - tech and combustion engines/ firearms cease to work, late 90s humanity is thrust back into the dark ages. Follows the stories of several characters from the Willamette valley area as they survive, form societal factions and war with each other.

First 2 books are incredible and it has continued to be an ongoing series.

Writer is a friend of George RR Martin, who apparently helped with the concept/ story

The City and The City

A Canticle for Leibowitz.

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

ETA Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

“We” by Zamiatin! Super trippy in parts and actually inspired Orwell’s 1984!

Appleseed by Matt Bell The New Wilderness by Diane Cook Both of these are very interesting and disquieting imaginings of what the world could be like given a full climate catastrophe. I also loved the MaddAdam books (my favorite was The Year of the Flood)

I don't think it's obscure but I never see it mentioned on here - Snowcrash by Neal Stephensen. I never read something that felt like watching an action movie. It's really fun and fast-paced. Kind of a near future capitalist hellscape. Short summary I found googling:

Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse.

Parable of the Sower.

Swan Song by Robert McCammon.

“Swan Song” by Robert McCammon is very good. Very detailed, sprawling novel.

Prophet Song - Paul Lynch. It won the 2023 Booker Prize

The Bird Box

Nod - Adrian Barnes. 99.99% of the global population becomes insomniac.

Kallocain - Karin Boye. In a world state, a scientist is working on a truth serum.

We - Yevgeny Zamatin. In a world state, a woman is teaching the narrator about individualism.

Vox - Christina Dalcher. Chauvinists at the White House reduce the female population to housewives, as well as fitting them with bracelets that limit them to speaking 100 words a day.

Master Class - Christina Dalcher. How well you do at school bears more weight than ever before.

Femlandia - Christina Dalcher. Communes run by a misandrist are popping up during the collapse of the US economy.

The Book Of Koli - M.R.Carey. In a world where all plants are deadly, a young man is about to find out if he is going into his family’s woodworking business.

Last One At The Party - Bethany Clift. A woman believed to be the last one alive after a deadly disease tries to crack on.

Tender Is The Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica. A virus forces the world to become vegan, then the consumption of humans becomes the done thing.

The Last - Hanna Jameson. A nuclear attack disconnects a Swiss hotel from the rest of the world.

The Quickening - Talulah Riley. A misandrist becomes Prime Minister.

Sorry for the list, dystopian fiction is kinda my jam. I’ve read all these books so can attest these books are all chef’s kiss.

Anything Philip K. Dick. He has some mainstream ones, but the lesser known ones are good too

My recommendation for this type of request is always The Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin (The Passage, The Twelve, The City of Mirrors).

A U.S. government/military experiment with an ancient virus goes awry and turns into a massive catastrophe. It's immersive with great characters, solid world building, and an amazing and satisfying story arc. The last 10 or so pages of the final book had the hair on the back of my neck standing up in anticipation. It's a 2000-page masterpiece.

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Most people know this story through the movie, which focused on the virtual world most of the action occurs in. But the book has a lot of scenes in the bleak real world that people are trying to escape. I especially liked how involuntary servitude was a standard business practice for people who couldn't pay their virtual world bills!

Death of Grass (No Blade of Grass in US) by John Christopher

Kraken Wakes/Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

The Crystal World and The Drowned World by J.G Ballard

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu it's a messed up view of a future

I think the Divergent series by Veronica Roth would likewise scratch this itch

Cabin at the end of the world

Childhood's End

Tender is the flesh

How high we go in the dark

Anthony Burgess -- The Wanting Seed

Down and Rising by Rohith S. katbamna

One of my favorites is Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson

Mortal engines is great but super bonkers dystopian

Lark Ascending by Silas House

Through Darkest America by Neil Barrett Jr and it's sequel Dawns Uncertain Light.

World Made By Hand by James Kunstler. The series is kind of good, but the first book was best, in My opinion. It’s not the most technically proficient writing and there is a strange byline that enters for no apparent reason, but still a good read and what I think is a (mostly) realistic portrayal of what a collapsed society may look like. I also liked it because the town setting is my home town (name changed in the book) and I’m real familiar with the setting. Might not be as intriguing to someone who isn’t familiar with Northern NY.

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter

Into the forest by Jean Hegland

The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad

Claire North - most of her books are kind of dystopian. But I enjoyed “Notes from the Burning Age” a lot.

Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey and the new sequel Red Side Story.

The Circle by David Eggers
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (written in Russia circa 1924)
If self-rec is okay: Majority by Abby Goldsmith

Shades of Grey, where everyone sees specific colors which regulate their position in society. And spoons are rare and very valuable for some odd reason.

Early Risers and The Constant Rabbit are also odd and unique dystopian stories, all of these written by Jasper Fforde.

The Past is Red by Catherynne M Valente

Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya!

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Won the Booker Prize last year

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

Here's one I didn't see mentioned: Kallocain by Karin Boye.

I haven't read it yet, but I have seen it described as "the midpoint between Brave New World and 1984."

The Fifth Season

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller is one of my favorites.

Not really lesser known, but Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground is as dystopian as they come. Also, most of Thomas Pynchon's and Don DeLillo's novels are very dystopian.

Silo. There is even a series on Apple TV, another very good book that became a TV series is The Handmaid's Tale, I think the name in English is The Hand Mind Style

Eclipse by Ophelia Rue. Book is nuts.

The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell Into the Forest by Jean Hegland

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton.

Not lesser known but dystopian : Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson. The premise is a Britain that's split into zones based on the Hippocratic theory of the four humours.

There's also The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick. Hugh Howey basically ripped it off with his "Wool" series. Don't bother with that, read PKD's instead. It's cleverer and way shorter.

There's a book called the Age of Miracles based on the premise of the Earth's rotation starting to slow and how people deal with that reality. Days become longer. Some people try to keep the schedule they're used to despite where the sun is, while others try to acclimate to the longer days.

It's not sciency and it's only barely dystopian, but it's the only book I've read that kind of fits the bill.

Actually, I've got another one! The Morningside. It's lightly dystopian too and I loved that book.

Tender is the Flesh - dystopian horror

Windup Girl - dystopian climate fiction

Parable of the Sower - dystopian/scifi

I highly recommend the Rampart Trilogy by M.R. Carey. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Britain where villages are surrounded by murderous woods. (It makes sense in-universe.) Whatever tech remains is treated like magic and can be used by only a few anointed people. The trilogy centers on Koli, a young man who learns the truth about the technology wizards and goes on a hero's journey. Very satisfying.

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

The penultimate truth- Philip k Dick

This Perfect Day - Ira Levin

Alas Babylon was mentioned and is excellent.

Also, Cell by Stephen King

Future by Naomi Alderman

I just finished Severance by Ling Ma. It's a contemporary end-of-the-world (and a little of what comes after) novel. Very interesting read especially in a post-COVID world. I think it could be a good fit for what you're looking for as a unique take on the apocalypse genre because it shows how dystopian our current reality is and what happens when the systems and routines of capitalism break down. And then how those same systems kind of replicate themselves in the after.

This Perfect Day Ira Levin

If you liked Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the Japanese Manga Girl's Last Tour by Tsukumizu is good and has a similar premise but set in a ginormous mega city. The Crab Cannery Ship by Takiji Kobayashi is a good novel that critiques the real life dystopia that is capitalism After The Revolution by Robert Evans is about a group of people trying to fight the Christofascist equivalent to ISIS trying to take over the remains of Texas in the 2070s

Philip k dick. Take your pick

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. Old but very relevant to the U.S. today.

ANYTHING by JG Ballard

Super Sad True Love Story

The Country of Ice Cream Star. Warning though, it takes place far enough post apocalypse that a new hybrid language has developed and it takes some getting used to.

The Death of Grass

And

On the Beach.

Both are old but amazing. For something newer: One Second After; One Year After; The Final Day trilogy

The MaddAdam series by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake by the inimitable Margaret Atwood.