1805 — 2019
Dystopian Fictions
An Analysis of Crisis Imaginaries
A visual exploration of 492 dystopian works across 5 crisis types and 5 media, spanning over 214 years of imagined catastrophe.
492
Works
5
Crisis Types
5
Media Types
214+
Years
5 Faces of the Apocalypse
From pandemics to nuclear war, from alien invasion to ecological collapse, dystopian fiction explores every route to civilization's end.
Health
Pandemics, plagues, and biological catastrophes that decimate populations and reshape civilizations.
94 works
Natural Disaster
Earthquakes, floods, climate collapse, and cosmic events that overwhelm human defenses.
89 works
Nuclear
Atomic warfare, radiation wastelands, and the shadow of mutually assured destruction.
115 works
Aliens
Extraterrestrial invasions and first contacts gone wrong, testing humanity's survival instinct.
60 works
War
Global conflicts, civil wars, and military dystopias that push societies to their breaking point.
121 works
A Design Fiction Research Project
This corpus of 492 dystopian fictions was assembled by Making Tomorrow as part of a design fiction methodology exploring how crisis imaginaries shape — and are shaped by — cultural production across media.
By mapping fictions across time, geography, and media, this research reveals patterns in how societies imagine their own collapse — and what those patterns tell us about collective anxieties, cultural biases, and narrative innovation.
The dataset spans 214 years of creative production across 5 media types, capturing the evolving relationship between humanity and its imagined end.
