Ethics and Politics
I'm working on this right now, so check back tomorrow and Friday - I'm only putting in books we have in the library or I can bring from home, or I'm getting from Kinokuniya for you after school today! If you have a request, let me know.
This page has ethical dilemmas for everyone: If you scroll down this page is divided into:
This page has ethical dilemmas for everyone: If you scroll down this page is divided into:
- Dystopian fiction (mostly young adult)
- Science Fiction (mostly more adult)
- Contemporary Realism (young adult)
- Fantasy (young adult)
Utopias/Dystopias Assignment
Novels to avoid (for this assignment - but do read them for fun!):
Classics:
Classics:
- 1984
- Animal Farm
- Brave New world
- Fahrenheit 451
- Catch 22
- Hunger Games
- Divergent
- The Giver
- Mazerunner
Dystopian fiction
If you want to challenge yourself, think about looking at the origin of the word "dystopia" which was coined as the opposite to Utopia, and C17th novel which describes a perfect society where, despite their lack of Christianity, the people are closer to realizing the Christian ideal society through rational government than Europe ever was. Very much of its time-period, it was written in opposition to the autocratic statesmanship (waning feudalism) outlined in Machiavelli's The Prince(written a few years earlier) and the new economic relations of enclosure (rising capitalism) emerging in England at the time.
What if every word you spoke belonged to some and you had to pay to use their words?
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Imagine a school set up as a computer game - you control everything and 'good' decisions are rewarded by sponsorship and celebrity branding. But what happens if you want to opt out?
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Due to a genetic mistake, life spans are reduced to 20 years.Kidnapped Rhine must marry a rich geneticist's son. Is her independence worth fighting for when she knows she'll soon die?
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What kind of society can kids make when all the adults are suddenly "gone"?
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Students in a special boarding school create art in an attempt to live on rather than have their organs harvested.
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Ariel has lived her entire live in the utopian dome of reverie. When her mother disappears she meets an outsider...
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What would the world be like if everyone had the internet implanted in their brain?
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While she convalesces after a terrible car accident, Eve is given the task of designing her perfect man.
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Discovering her connection to the ethically dubious Haven Institute, Gemma struggles to return to her normal life. Meanwhile, in the world outside the Haven Institute, Lyra and Caelum are finding it hard to be human—and neither of them knows where they belong or who they can trust.
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When The Snap sweeps the globe, everyone can instantly hear everything that everyone else is thinking. As secrets and lies are laid bare, suburbs and cities explode into insanity and violence. What might have been an evolutionary leap instead initiates the apocalypse.
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Every two years Min is murdered; hours later, she wakes up, unhurt.
Nightmares of murder and death plague Noah. An asteroid threatening Earth, leaves little room for two troubled teens, but Min vows to discover what is happening and uncovers a vast conspiracy, even more sinister than the murders. |
From a distance, the Haven Institute, tucked away on a private island off the coast of Florida, looks serene and even beautiful. But up close the locked doors, military guards, and biohazard suits tell a different story. In truth, it is a clandestine research facility where thousands of replicas, or human models, are born, raised, and observed.
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Dying isn't the end when you can be brought back to life as a worker who does nothing but follow orders.
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Matteo Alacran was not born; he was harvested. Can a boy who was bred to guarantee another’s survival find his own purpose in life? And can he ever be free?
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What would you do if you found out that you were not who you thought you were? That your parents were not your biological parents? That you did not belong to any rank in society?
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What would the world look like if love was diagnosed as a mental illness and everyone is innoculated as a teen?
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the Religious Rights has taken over america and predicted when God will call away all believers. When unbeliever, Vivian wakes to find holes in her ceiling and her parents missing, she begins a quest to discover the Truth.
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When Mila has an accident she discovers she's an android and ends up on the run from her military creators
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When Eva wakes from a coma she discovers her brain has been transplanted into a chimpanzee's body [Mine - reliable students only]
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When Kelty's best friend is severely injured, the only way to secure both their futures is to sell her body to the highest bidder and become a Space Cadet in an artificial body.
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As an underage terrorist, Kyla's mind has been wiped and she' been adopted into a new family to escape the death penalty. But memories of her past are starting to return.
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Caught during terrorist attack, Marcus is interrogated for days, emergin in a police state where every citizen is a potential terrorist. Noone will believe his story.
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Beautiful people get everything, right? So why not live in a world where every child is given plastic surgery at 16 years to make the world more equal?
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Alex is in prison and then undergoes a horrific new treatment in prison. Later, in the real world, he is the puppet of opposing political factions. Explores issues of free will, and the nature of evil. Trigger warnings: Extreme violence.
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Romeo and Juliet in a world where power relationships between Black and White are reversed.
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This feminist nightmare describes a world where women are literally trained in gigantic 'factories' to become baby-makers or pleasure-givers for the patriarchal fundamentalists who run their world.
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Many parts of his life make sense when Dominic discovers he had an older brother who died - but how much of your identity is your own when you discover you're a clone?
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Jenna has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago.Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?
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Newperth is divided into rich “Centrals”, poor “Bankers” and “Ferals”. Rosie Black is a Banker. When Rosie finds an unusual box, she has no idea of the grave consequences of her discovery. A mysterious organisation wants it – and will kill to get it.
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At "the farm", a school for geniuses, the 17year olf students who forma group called the Think Tank become aware of "the babies", five children, frail as butterflies who are being experimented on.
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A chilling vision of a world where the power of ideas and language is no longer necessary—or possible. The Citizens of this future world drift contentedly, their every emotion regulated, complete with drug-induced happiness.
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In Oran, the plague begins as a series of unheeded portents. It gradually becomes a omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.
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Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want.
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After years of failure, Robyn finds three subjects that appear to have the ancient gene that enables humans to communicate with animals. In a race against time, Robyn must track down the teens with this rare gene before her bosses turns them into lab rats.
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Ashala has been captured by Chief Administrator Rose, a man who is intent on destroying Ashala’s Tribe of runaway Illegals. Injured and vulnerable, Ashala is forced to succumb to the machine that will pull secrets from her mind.
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Dallas supplements her farming family's income by shooting feral pigs. To prove she's killed each pig, she sends a genetic sample to the lab that sponsors her work. One day she cheats and sends her own genes...
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Science fiction
John Smith, an alien trying to live a normal human life is on the run from the people who destroyed his planet.
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A virus has decimated the human race. Does the answer lie, as Kira suspects, with the enemy - the cyborg "partials"?
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When a cosmic event leaves Earth's population blind, carnivorous plants begin to take over the world. A classic.
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Andrew "Ender" is chosen to attend an elite military school where he is trained using computer games to fight and destroy unknown aliens .
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Biological weapons have killed 20-60 years olds. Starving "Starters" under the age of 20, allow Enders over 60 to temporarily inhabit their bodies via a neurochip. when Callie's chip malfunctions, she wakes in an Ender's mansion
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For Elspeth freedom is-like so much else after the Great White-a memory, because people like Elspeth-mysteriously born with powerful mental abilities-are feared by the Council and hunted down like animals...to be destroyed.
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An explorer discovers a remote community in south America made entirely of women who give birth by parthenogenesis. [Mine - reliable students only]
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IWhen a plague breaks out in New Beijing, cyborg Cinder's life changes dramatically. A brillant sci-fi retelling of the classic fairytale.
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Humans are kept in zoos by mysterious keepers, and believe there is no world outside the one they live in. But when Cassie escapes into the unknown wilderness, she realises not all as she has been taught.
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When Reece and David wake in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened. At home in a now-police state, Reece meets the beautiful Amber Gray, and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy.
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Humans have overcome death, the internet is a sentient being and Citra and Rown are apprentice scythes - people who choose who should die. For hunger games fans.
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Long after Earth's ecosystems are destroyed, Anna and Joe journey back with genetic supplies to replenish the planet, but they are greeted by seemingly-sentient animals.
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In this universe more advanced species support the evolution of less advanced species who must serve them for millennia before "uplifting" others - But no one ever uplifted humans... [Mine - reliable students only]
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Twenty-first century humans, Ivan and Josie are marooned in the time of the Neanderthals. Deals with complex issues of gender, class and the nature of spirituality and civilization. [Mine - reliable students only]
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What would happen if we went back in time and changed something small - for example broke a butterfly's wing?
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Ray Bradbury is a classic speculative fiction writer and thinker whose short stories explore all manner of unusual scenarios from dinosaur hunters who travel in time and colonies on mars to human-bots and strange penal codes.
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Contemporary Realism
Arrested in France by the Nazis, an English pilot writes her 'confession', focusing especially on her friendship with fellow female pilot Maddie. The unreliable narrator and bookend structure result in a terrible ethical dilemma.
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Lost for moths, Judith returns to her village with her tongue cut out and cannot tell anyone what happened to her missing friend. An exploration of Truth, suspicion and the beginnings of communication.
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Peter, a perfect Aryan orphan is brought up by high ranking Nazi's but what happens when he questions his upbringing?
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Escaped slave Sethe is free but she cannot escape the bonds of her terrible past, or the things she did to save her child from slavery. A powerful Pulitzer Prize winner that everyone should read.
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When Oscar's friend is bullied in front of the schools surveiloance system he and his friends hack into the syst3em to expose the bullies - but at what point does their behaviour ctross the line into becoming bullies themselves?
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Based on the first White school to accept Black students. Sarah and Linda, daughters of activists on opposing sides, are brought together through a group assignment to discover truths about race and sexuality
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Kirby's mum is not coping and sends her to live with relatives -who turn out to be part of a fundamentalist cult.
PEOPLE MIGHT HEAR YOU tells a similar story |
Abused in secret by her mother and sister, June finds her freedom with Blister, a boy she meets in the woods. But life (and hope) and not that simple....
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At an end-of-summer pool party, Ashleigh's friends suggest she text him a picture of herself - sans swimsuit. But when Kaleb and Ashleigh break up, Kaleb forwards the text. Soon the photo has gone viral, attracting the attention of the school board, the local police, and the media.
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At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything.
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When Lucas asks his best friend, Tessa, to the Prom, she comes out as a lesbian. Upset, he tells his mates and town-wide controversy ensues. Humiliated and confused, Lucas must decide if he should stand on the sidelines or make sure that Tessa Masterson will go to Prom - with her girlfriend.
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Raped and humiliated at a party, Hadley's best friend was driven to take her own life and Hadley is forced to see her friend's attackers in the classroom every day. Devastated, enraged and needing an outlet for her grief, Hadley decides to get a little justice of her own.
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17 year old Freda is struggling with PTSD brought on by a hostage situation when she was 9 years old. The book moves back and forth to relive the event, revealing (maybe) what really happened, along with how the girl has fared over the years.
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Six months after her sister, Rosie is brutally murdered, Eve meets Antony and discovers that he was there the night Rosie died and did nothing to help. Is there any way she can ever get past that? Inspired by the murder of goth, Sophie Lancaster, in 2007.
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Jasmine Lovely has it all, but when a party spins out of control, Jazz discovers what can happen when your mistakes go viral. We know our kids are at risk of becoming victims of cyberbullying. But do we know how at risk they are of becoming perpetrators?
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Arriving at a new school, Zoe is initiated, painfully, into the Beckoners, a twisted group of girls who use intimidation and violence to stay on top. She struggles to tear loose without becoming a target herself, while also trying to save April - or Dog, as she is called - from further torment.
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Fantasy Novels
Alex tags along to Brazil with his anthropologist grandmother and discovers a remote tribe. this book explores the contrast between our civilisation and nature as well as the exploitation of native culture.
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Gnostic Christianity, particle physics and literary giants meet in this adventure novel that explores the nature of good and evil, the value of truth and the nature of rebellion.
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Written during the era of exploration, the original version of Gulliver's Travels is a wonderful if long-wided satire about the various ills of government
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Rossamund is just about to begin a dangerous life in a world of predatory monsters, chemical potions and surgically altered people. What starts as a simple journey is threatened by encounters with monsters—and people, who may be worse.
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A toxic fuel is choking the land, the machine-powered Lotus Guild is publicly burning those they deem Impure, and the Shõgun cares for nothing but his own dominion. Yukiko learns the horrifying extent of the Shõgun's crimes, but what can one girl and a flightless arashitora do against the might of an empire?
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