A dystopia is an unpleasant (typically repressive) society, often propagandized as being utopian. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction states that dystopian works depict a negative view of "the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction."

This Golden Deer Classics anthology contains the following classic dystopian works:

- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

- Erewhon, or Over The Range by Samuel Butler

- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

- The Iron Heel by Jack London