Fictional Book Worlds: What Makes Them Unique
How authors of sci-fi and dystopian fiction reshape our ideas about space, power, and humanity.
Contemporary literature actively engages with alternate worlds, where the basic rules of coexistence shift. Writers reimagine power, social hierarchy, space, and human nature itself.
The DeTalks team has gathered examples of books where 'unusual' worlds drive the plot.
Criteria for 'Unusual' Book Worlds
In selecting books with 'unusual worlds,' the team drew on plot analysis and reader reviews from Goodreads. The list includes books that meet the following criteria:
- An alternative system of power, morality, or hierarchy;
- Characters with physical, psychological, or social limitations;
- A nonstandard organization of time and space;
- An isolated or multi-tiered environment.
Isolated Space as a Form of Power
Thomas — the protagonist of James Dashner's The Maze Runner — comes to in a dark elevator. The teenager remembers nothing except his own name. The lift carries Thomas up to the Glade — an enclosed, square space. Beyond its borders lies a shifting maze whose walls rearrange themselves every night, isolating its residents from dangerous creatures.
As for power in this environment, a community of over 50 boys has built its own system of coexistence. That order starts breaking down after Thomas arrives, and later, the first girl, Teresa. Her appearance also coincides with a system failure, when the maze's doors stop closing at night, turning the Glade from a relatively safe space into a field of pure survival.
One reviewer, Lauren Lantz, described the book as brilliantly plotted and genuinely well written,
praising how vividly Dashner's world-building let her picture every detail as if she knew the Glade from the inside, she wrote in her Goodreads review.
Vertical Worlds and Entrenched Inequality
The events of Suyi Davies Okungbowa's novella Lost Ark Dreaming take place in Nigeria after a climate catastrophe — a rise in Atlantic Ocean levels. Humanity survives in five towers rising above the water.
The world of the towers is divided into levels, where the upper floors are occupied by the wealthy and influential, who have access to essential resources. The middle levels keep the system running, while the lower floors house technical staff. A person's physical position in this structure determines their social status and lifespan.
But the novella's world isn't fully isolated, since the towers' vertical structure serves as a control mechanism, where movement between levels is only possible with permission.
One Goodreads reviewer, writing under the name Jenn, praised how the short novella impressively blends world-building, West African mythology, and dystopian storytelling to deliver a powerful message about climate change and humanity, she wrote on the platform.
An Alternate City and the Residents 'Struck From' Society
Richard Mayhew from Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere leads an ordinary life in 'London Above.' But after helping an injured girl, the protagonist gradually becomes 'invisible' to the ordinary city.
Richard ends up in 'London Below' — a space that exists parallel to the metropolis. It's home to the homeless, forgotten beings, and half-mythical creatures. Time and safety are unstable there too, so survival depends on being able to read the hidden rules.
In 'London Below,' power isn't centralized — it's shaped by temporary alliances, debts, promises, and fear.
One reviewer, Steve, described Gaiman as someone who truly understands fantasy, capturing its essence not through blunt exposition but through sleight of hand and enchanting language,
rarely stating anything directly and instead letting readers imagine his characters and events for themselves, he wrote on Goodreads.
Divided Perception as a Form of Power
China Miéville's novel The City & the City tells the story of Inspector Tyador Borlú, who lives and works in Besźel, one of two city-states. Right next door, on the very same street, exists Ul Qoma, but its residents, events, and buildings must be consciously 'unseen' by the neighboring city. From birth, citizens are trained to recognize which space belongs to which city by language, clothing, and manner of movement, while ignoring everything that belongs to the 'other' city.
The book's world functions as an autonomous system built on discipline and self-control. Power is embodied by the secretive agency Breach — a force that only intervenes when the boundary between the cities is violated. Fear becomes the main mechanism of control, so citizens themselves maintain the system, voluntarily refusing to see part of reality.
One commenter, Nataliya, wrote that The City & the City raises questions of national identity, arguing that building a people or a nation is more than simple geography —
that it comes down to subtler things, like fragments of learned behavior, beliefs and habits that seem strange to outsiders, time-tested social conventions, and taboos that appear absurd at first glance but are rooted in old traditions, and that it's exactly this combination of small, seemingly meaningless, hard-to-grasp things that defines a nation, she wrote in a Goodreads comment.
Enclosed Space as a Living Form of Power
The protagonist of Mariam Petrosyan's novel The Gray House — a teenager nicknamed Smoker — ends up at a boarding school for children with disabilities. There, he discovers the House — an enclosed space with a history spanning more than a century.
The novel's world is built as a self-contained system, where time and memory follow the House's own internal logic. Inside the boarding school, groups form with sharply defined boundaries, their own symbols, and unwritten rules, while the formal administration has almost no real influence over the children's lives.
The idyll breaks down as graduation approaches. Residents can either leave the boarding school or stay with the House and accept it for good. If they accept, the space becomes a tool of total submission to an imagined power that holds them through fear.
One reviewer, going by Para (wanderer), described the House as demanding respect, capable of accepting or rejecting you, granting gifts or taking everything you have, plunging you into a fairy tale or a nightmare, killing you, aging you, or giving you wings —
calling it a powerful, shifting deity that tolerates nothing so much as being reduced to simple words, they wrote on Goodreads.
Control Over Body and Language
Alex, the protagonist of Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange, lives in a violent future where teenage aggression is part of everyday life. Reality is filtered through an invented slang that distances the reader from directly perceiving the violence.
The novel's social space functions as a system of hidden control. At first, Alex moves freely through the city, since the state tolerates chaos until a person becomes politically inconvenient. After his arrest, the protagonist ends up in prison, where power no longer hides itself. There, his body becomes an object of direct intervention, and his choice becomes the subject of a state experiment.
One reviewer, Martine, noted that while the book contains long descriptions of horrific crimes, it doesn't glorify violence or serve as a book about violence for its own sake —
rather, it's an exploration of the morality of free will, of whether it's better to choose to be bad than to be conditioned toward good, and of alienation, and how to fight the excesses that such alienation can lead to, she wrote in her Goodreads review.