#5 Dystopian Fiction   This quote is the first sentence of one
of the first young adult novels I ever read, Uglies by Scott
Westerfeld. The first in a trilogy, Uglies is a story about a
girl named Tally, who lives in a future society where everyone
at the age of sixteen receives a series of operations and
medical procedures to make them “pretty.” This, the future
government believes, will keep conflict from happening and make
everyone happy. But little do the citizens know, it’s not just
their looks being altered during these operations.  This novel
is one of many in the dystopian sub-genre of teen literature.
What does “dystopian” mean, you ask? Dystopian fiction explores
the future as a nightmare. Corrupted governments, humans being
used, discriminated, and tortured, cities existent during a
total collapse of society, or even like the world in Uglies,
where the corruption is less visible, where everything seems
hunky-dory until some free-thinking rebel decides to stick their
nose where it doesn’t belong. I’