While we are certainly in the most sinister timeline, there is a sliver of hope:

The best art comes from a position of adversity. The strongest works not only stand for something, they fight against something. That means over the next 4 years, we are going to see some really dark and spectacular speculative fiction. The darker the times, the brighter the dreams.

There will be a massive influx of Dystrumpian stories, songs, and art.

I humbly submit my own offering in this new mini genre, THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS:

It's a cold and desolate New York story of a double-amputee veteran whose government-issued high tech prosthetic arms are malfunctioning. With winter approaching and homelessness looming, his only hope is an independent clinic in Manhattan. But can he pay their price?

While you're waiting for more works to hit the scene, here are three classics works of oppression I have loved.

FAHRENHEIT 451

It was a pleasure to burn...

What better story for an election where the greatest driving force was the desire to burn it all down? In a time of constant and pervasive distraction, Bradbury's perhaps most famous work deserves rekindling.

DARKNESS AT NOON

The best book I read in 2015 that (I didn't write ε-(‘ﾍ´○)┓) this is an absolutly wonderful dark and gripping tale about Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik awaiting his execution. When the drums start beating for a special prosecutor, pick up a copy of Koestler's masterwork.

1984

I first read this in detention, and I've returned to it many times since. 1984 is the definitive work about the rise of the surveillance state. A brutal and uncompromising piece, I also highly recommend Animal Farm.

On my to-read list is:

THE IRON HEEL

I haven't read this one yet, but it has a ton of elements I find interesting. A dystopian piece about a tyranny written by Jack London in 1908? Sign me up. Will report back if I like it.

Of course these are just the titles that immediately sprang to mind when I thought about this, surely there are many I've forgotten or never read at all. What are you reading at the start of the End Times?

Also a special shoutout to Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, which was somehow written as a prescient allegory to the Trump campaign.