Fiction books that would give this world a bad name.

Okay. Doing some research for my next NaNo novel.

Basically, we have been wiped out and a new group of people/creatures has taken our place (this will be a fantasy YA book, if that makes any difference). The only thing that remains of our 'history' are several books. Only they aren't nonfiction, but regular fiction books that are mistaken to real life stuff.

The books need to be ones that most people would at least know the subject/recognize the titles.

I was thinking Planet of the Apes or Animal Farm, though I have not read either. Does Animal Farm paint humans badly? or does it just have animals in it?

Don't need books about wars (as that is not a new concept to these people), but more like the whole planet is jacked up and deserved to be destroyed. Maybe even some scifi stuff, so this collection of books can be gathered from the same person (and so our society seems way more advanced than it was).

Umm...does that make sense to anyone?

TLPhillps said:

Wait what? You want to write about a civilization where they emulate what they read in fiction books?

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Guess more details are needed.

They are recolonizing the Earth from a few survivors left here. Several hundred years pass, so the generations don't know much of what happened, and then some books are found. These books are looked upon as the 'history' of the past generations that were wiped out. They know nothing of how the people really were except for the books. They aren't trying to recreate anything.

As with just about every group of people, there are going to be wars and battles fought, so what is in the books they find need to be more...shock value.

Does that make more sense?

DrZoidberg said:

The Bible (especially Old Testament) paints a pretty grim picture of humanity.

But you probably don't want to go there.

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Steering well and truly clear of that!

DeleyanLee said:

I was thinking Danielle Steele, personally.

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I haven't read her, but I know the genre a little. How does she apply?

virtue_summer said:

Well, what novels have you read that you thought depicted the worst sides of humanity? I'd use those. That said, the apathy portrayed in Fahrenheit 451, which is way too real to begin with, spooks me.

Lastly, please read whatever books you decide to reference. Focusing a story around someone interpreting Animal Farm as real, for instance, if you've never read Animal Farm is putting far more work on yourself than is necessary.

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Only thing is, most of the books I have read aren't too well known. I want to try as much as possible to keep the reader from having to look up whatever books I use.

I don't plan on getting too heavy with the descriptions of the books in the story. But the new race of people have developed these bad feelings toward the people who came before them because of all these things they have read.


Thanks to everyone for the suggestions of titles! I hadn't been really planning on doing fantasy ie Tolkien, but now I am getting an idea for it...

Planning stories is fun, ne?

Selcaby said:

Can they be more realistic books? How about something like The Grapes of Wrath? It paints a very unflattering picture of a quite small area -- they might assume the whole planet was like that.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, too. Depends how badly misled you want your characters to be.

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I was originally going to go for more realistic books. But this new society is going to have some level of magic going on, so if I use fantasy books, that could have led to them mastering how to do some of this stuff.

So many choices....