There are good books, and there are bad books. Then there are books that are so sublimely awful, so hilariously inept, that you can’t stop reading, no matter how hard you’re laughing. Called “so bad it’s good” (aka “sobig”), this microgenre consists of books that are terrible and enjoyable at the same time.

Most of these books were traditionally published, although a few were self-published or released on the Internet. All of them have a well-earned reputation for being masterpieces of failure. These books have provided many laughs to many people, even decades after their publication and long after better works have faded into obscurity.

The Eye of Argon, one of the most famous sobig books, is regularly read at science fiction conventions. There, a circle of readers tries to get through as much of the story as possible without laughing. The book is chock-full of nonsensical purple prose that makes you laugh out loud, including this description of an alluring woman:

Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench, Grignr advanced, wishing to wholesomely occupy his time. The flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half-naked harlot of his choice, her stringy, orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose, as she raised a half-drained mug to her pale red lips.

The Eye of Argon was originally published in a science fiction journal in 1970. The story soon gained notoriety as a particularly egregious example of science fiction writing, which led to group readings at science fiction conventions. Even 45 years later, the story is still well-known.

Little is known about author Jim Theis, who was just 16 years old when he wrote the story. Before his death, he gave only a couple of interviews about the novella. One was in a later issue of the same science fiction journal which had published The Eye of Argon. The other, unconfirmed interview was with a science fiction radio show called Hour 25. Hurt by the criticism, Theis never published anything else.

Despite its reputation, The Eye of Argon is the rare science fiction story that is still widely read, even 45 years after publication in an obscure fan journal in the Ozarks. Surely, that’s some kind of accomplishment.

Amanda McKittrick Ros, the author of Helen Huddleson, has been described as “uniquely dreadful” and “the greatest bad writer who ever lived.” Her “fans” include Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and Nick Page. The Inklings, an Oxford literary group, used to hold competitions to see who could read her work the longest without laughing, much like The Eye of Argon readings described above.

But what makes Ros’s work so uniquely awful?

It could be the melodramatic, so-purple-it’s-glowing prose with descriptions of eyes as “globes of glare” or pants as “the southern necessary.” Then again, it could be her ability to find new and inventive ways to be bad with every line and to use every word in the thesaurus to describe something in the most convoluted way possible.

For example, here is a paragraph from Helen Huddleson, McKittrick’s last novel, which describes the villain’s evil accomplices:

She had a swell staff of sweet-faced helpers swathed in stratagem, whose members and garments glowed with the lust of the loose, sparkled with the tears of the tortured, shone with the sunlight of bribery, dangled with the diamonds of distrust, slashed with sapphires of scandal and rubies wrested from the dainty persons of the pure.

The characters in Helen Huddleson are mostly named after fruits. There is no Professor Plum, although there is a Sir Peter Plum, a Lord Raspberry, the evil Madame Pear, servant girl Lily Lentil, and the Earl of Grape.

Unfinished at her death, the book was discovered and posthumously published by Jack Loudan. If possible, it is even more confused than her previous books, with characters coming and going without explanation and with a plot that seems to go everywhere and nowhere at once.

Theophilus Marzials is famous for writing “the worst poem in the English language.” The poem, aptly called “A Tragedy,” begins with:

Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.

Despite this poem, Marzials counted Edmund Gosse and Ford Madox Ford among his admirers. Ford called Marzials “the handsomest, the wittiest, the most brilliant, and the most charming of poets.”

Marzials only published one book of poetry, The Gallery of Pigeons. Most of the poems are not quite as bad as “A Tragedy.” But there are some strange lines that haven’t aged well, like this excerpt from “An Arabesque”:

Half-asleep I look—believe me!
I’ve an eye alive for barter!
On her mouth a luscious fruit-stall
I but clink one coin of kissing,
To get back a feast of peaches,
Ripe rich fruit—Ay! ripe to bursting
To be bitten, till the kernels.
Snowy white and streak’d with crimson,
Ice and thrill me back again.

Marzials went on to write popular songs. One of his most famous songs, “The Twickenham Ferry,” was still being performed onstage and on-screen as late as 1933. However, he is still best known as the author of the “worst poem ever written.” The “Flop, plop” of “A Tragedy” haunts his legacy to this day.

Intended as an English-Portuguese phrase book, English As She Is Spoke features many literal translations from Portuguese to English. Its author, Pedro Carolino, was not quite fluent in English. So he relied on Portuguese-French and French-English dictionaries to literally translate idioms and popular expressions, turning his own phrase book into a game of trilingual telephone.

The result is a garbled dictionary in which the English makes little sense. It is full of strange names and phrases, including birds such as the “Whoop,” the “Pea Cock,” and “Yeung turkey.” “On the church” items contain “the sides of the nef,” “the little cellar,” and “the holywater pot.” Then there are the familiar phrases such as “Wax my shoes,” “Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss,” and “These apricots and those peaches make me and to come water in mouth.”

This book prefigures the awkward and sometimes hilarious mistranslations of programs like Babelfish, where a phrase like “It’s a nice day” becomes “This is a day when the weather is good” when translated from English to Japanese to English again. When English As She Is Spoke was published, Babelfish was nothing but a fantasy, and Carolino’s inept translations were unprecedented and hilarious.

Anyone who’s tried to learn a second language will recognize the pain of trying to express a thought in a new language. Who hasn’t said something like “The walls have hearsay” in the language they were trying to learn? Carolino’s dogged determination to create an English phrase book, using two bilingual dictionaries and zero knowledge of English, is a triumph of enthusiasm over linguistics.

What The Eye of Argon is to science fiction, The Maradonia Saga is to fantasy. With terrible spelling and grammar and a cliche-ridden, nonsensical plot, the Maradonia Saga includes many cringeworthy passages. Here is a sampling:

The Professor collapsed on his white linen bed as he thought about the content of an ancient book he was studying during the last couple of days and nights.

Electric shockwaves, ponderous thunder and blinding lightning’s inflated the hall as the ruler of the Underworld, King Apollyon, suddenly disappeared with the sound of an explosion, but his boisterous voice still echoed through the cloister halls, “Go . . . for the kill!”

“Move! You are not the only people here. There are others too,” Alana smirked passing by.

The first volume was published when author Gloria Tesch was just 13 years old. What could have been a juvenile project became a so-bad-its-good sensation, much like Rebecca Black’s “Friday” song.

This series has earned a cult reputation for being awful in nearly every conceivable way—from cover art to grammar to the almost nonexistent plot. Tesch has also come under fire for her shady promotional tactics, which may have included placing her books on a “Bestsellers” bookshelf in a bookstore and then taking a picture next to them.

This cautionary tale features anthropomorphic horses smoking, drinking, and doing drugs in a field. Latawnya, a naughty horse, disobeys her parents and starts doing drugs with the other horses. Eventually, she learns to say “neigh” to drugs.

This book also includes a memorable poem about the dangers of drugs:

Using drugs will kill. So be for real.
Using drugs is not a good idea.
You can call me names and you can talk
about me too. I don’t use drugs and
neither should you.

The book was first published in 1991 but wasn’t rediscovered until the mid-2000s. The rediscovery has led to dramatic readings of the text. The book has also become a collector’s item, with copies selling for as much as $400 apiece.

Encouraged by the renewed attention, Sylvia Scott Gibson published a sequel, Latawnya the Naughty Horse Two, which “points out the low life drug pusher” and how Latawnya and friends “will see the back of a low life who is trying to hook everyone on drugs.” A third installment has yet to be announced as of early 2016.

The Clique starts with a 13-year-old girl scolding her mother and just gets worse from there. Over the course of The Clique series, four spoiled girls in middle school throw around money like it’s water, obsess over designers like Chanel and Prada, insult everyone in sight, and act stereotypically catty, bratty, and mean.

Unlike Mean Girls or other works that explore the world of teenage girls, these novels don’t seem to have a point, a moral, or a redeeming arc. They have been criticized by many readers as the literary equivalent of reality TV.

In fact, The Clique series references brands so often that the publishers sensed a money-making opportunity. In 2006, they announced that companies could pay for “the opportunity to get their products or services cast in these best-selling books. The value of these mentions far exceeds the hundreds of thousands of readers, creating a viral product buzz.” In fairness, the publishers insist that no paid product placement ever actually happened because “no brand ever expressed interest.”

Despite this controversy, The Clique series has a devoted fan base. A direct-to-DVD movie adaptation changed the story to have a moral ending, marking a rare case where a movie adaptation has more of a point than the original book does. This series can be read for its “car crash” appeal, the junk food quality of the story, or to see how shallow the series can actually get.

Romance novels are better known for their pulpy covers than their prose. People who have never read a romance novel can still imagine the florid descriptions within these books with their talk of “turgid loins” and “throes of passion.” However, not all romance novels are as bad as that. Some are much worse.

Jamaica Layne’s Knight Moves tells the story of Louise Jackson, who travels through time from the men’s restroom in a Medieval Times restaurant to the real Middle Ages. She meets Lord Verdigris, a handsome medieval knight of many charms, while he’s standing at a urinal in the restroom.

Louise is instantly captivated by this man, who’s “six-foot-five if he’s a day.” He has flowing red hair and a “combination of French, Scottish, and English accents.” He constantly calls her “milady” and uses stilted English in the style of modern Renaissance fair actors. They embrace passionately on a time-traveling toilet, and the rest is bad historical fiction.

Knight Moves also features many sexually explicit passages that weave together cutesy euphemisms for genitalia with explicit words for the same parts of the anatomy. The sex scenes are often bizarre, awkward, and about as erotic as watching a movie sex scene with your parents.

Just to add to the awkwardness, “verdigris” refers to the greenish patina seen on copper and other metals that are exposed to the atmosphere too long. Perhaps a gritty sequel featuring Prince Rust and Duke Oxidation will soon be released.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” James McIntyre broke this silence with his infamous poem, “Ode on a Mammoth Cheese Weighing Over 7,000 Pounds,” which includes such memorable lines as:

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees
Or as the leaves upon the trees
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivaled Queen of Cheese.

McIntyre, like William McGonagall, was an infamously bad poet. His poems are unmusical, with forced rhymes and stilted rhythms. This can be heard in his ode to “Agricultural Implements” (“Labor still it did sink lower / by introduction of mower”) and “Brain Engravings” (“Inscribed on it are autographs / And there is also photographs”).

Amazingly, “Ode on a Mammoth Cheese” was not McIntyre’s last word on the subject. His cheese-related poetry includes the “Oxford Cheese Ode,” “The Cheese Pioneer,” “Facts About Cheese,” “Hints to Cheese Makers,” and the epic “Prophecy Of A Ten Ton Cheese,” which was written to push cheesemakers to even greater heights of cheese production.

His prodigious body of work has inspired the James McIntyre Poetry Contest, which encourages poets to write further on “subjects of special interest to Oxford County [in Canada, where McIntyre lived], such as cheese or dairying, and people and places around the area.”

Is a Best Poems About Cheese anthology forthcoming? We can dream.

No list of the best worst writing is complete without a mention of My Immortal. This Harry Potter fan fiction is infamous for its awful grammar and spelling, nonsensical plot, and complete change of most Harry Potter characters into props in a Goth teenage girl’s fantasy.

The author of My Immortal turns Harry Potter into an angsty vampire, Draco Malfoy into a sensitive man, Snape and Lupin into Peeping Toms, and Dumbledore into an inarticulate, curse-happy hothead. There is almost nothing from the original books. The main character, “Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way,” is a transparent Mary Sue (an idealized author insert).

The fan fiction also features many nods to “Hot Topic goth” music, including bands like Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, and Slipknot. There are copious descriptions of Goth, or “goff,” outfits, such as this one from Chapter 12:

I [i.e., Ebony] went upstairs and put on a black leather minidress that was all ripped on the ends with lace on it. There was some corset stuff on the front. Then I put on black fishnets and black high-heeled boots with pictures of Billie Joe Armstrong on them. I put my hair all out around me so I looked like Samara from the Ring (if u don’t know who she iz ur a prep so f—k off!) and I put on blood-red lipstick, black eyeliner, and black lip gloss.

This is one of the most coherent paragraphs in the entire series. Some elements of My Immortal defy description, such as the love scenes between Ebony and Draco: “He put his thingie in my you-know-what, and we did it for the first time.” There are also frequent misspellings of “Ebony” as “Enoby.”

Soon after its publication in 2006, My Immortal gained a massive fan following because it embodied every terrible cliche about fan fiction. Was it serious or a parody? Was the author just putting everyone on?

To this day, there is no definitive answer. We still don’t know who wrote it.

Among other things, the book has inspired dramatic readings, a web series, and a wiki. Ten years later, My Immortal is still well-known as the best worst fan fiction ever.

Ray Bradbury once said, “I wasn’t trying to predict the future. I was trying to prevent it.” Really, that’s the whole point of science fiction. The genre has never been about predicting new technologies. Instead, its purpose is to warn us about the dark future to come, if we don’t change our path.

Occasionally, we listen and learn, and then society improves. But other times, we don’t. And while the present day seems quite ordinary to us, the reality is that our modern era was once a horrible, terrifying nightmare that sci-fi writers desperately tried to stop.

When The Twilight Zone first aired on TV, cosmetic surgery barely existed. It was only used for the absolute worst medical cases. The idea of someone getting their face restructured just for the sake of looking pretty still seemed outlandish to most people.

But not to the writers of The Twilight Zone. As it turns out, they knew exactly what was coming.

In the episode “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” we’re taken to a future where every person is expected to go through a “transformation” at age 18. This surgery completely changes their face to resemble one of a small number of gorgeous models. It’s such a big change that teenagers are appointed therapists to deal with the stress of waiting to become beautiful.

When they wrote it, the Twilight Zone writers were just worried about girls using too much make-up. But in South Korea, the world is more like “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” than even the writers could have predicted.

A shocking one in three girls in South Korea have had plastic surgery, and just like in the story, the results are drastic. So much so that plastic surgeons now have to hand out certificates proving that the attractive girl in question is really the same drab-looking person on her ID.

Just like in the story, plastic surgery is a common graduation gift for girls after high school. It really seems like they’re living in the Twilight Zone. Girls suffering through high school, unable to live up to the unreal standards that adults have created, and then conforming to one of a few faces as soon as they turn 18.

When Ray Bradbury wrote his short story, “The Veldt,” televisions were just coming into homes for the first time, and these inventions changed everything, especially parenting. It’s kind of hard to imagine how parents did it before Dora the Explorer was around to help out. Raising a child was a much different thing back in the day . . . and Bradbury was terrified about how it might change.

In “The Veldt,” Bradbury writes about a family that uses a “nursery”—basically, an interactive TV—to keep their kids entertained. The children end up being raised more by the nursery than by the parents, and that’s when the kids start going savage. It gets so bad that, when the worried parents finally shut the nursery down, the kids murder them.

Perhaps Bradbury’s story sounds kind of far-fetched. How could TV make a kid murder his parents? Well, the thing is, it actually happened. The exact events of the story played out in real life.

A 14-year-old boy named Noah Crooks was obsessed with video games, and just like in the story, his mother began to worry about how it was affecting him. His grades were going down, and he was becoming more and more prone to violence. And just like in the story, his mother decided to shut the video games down.

Noah didn’t take this well. He erupted in a fit of rage and murdered his own mother.

Sure, Noah isn’t exactly normal, but neither are the kids in the story. They’re portrayed as an extreme symptom of a larger problem. Ray Bradbury wasn’t saying everyone would murder their parents. Instead, he argued that children would lose enough parental guidance that it could possibly happen. And maybe Bradbury was right. Maybe TV and video games have really messed us up, but we’re just so used to them that we don’t even realize it.

When it came out in 1909, “The Machine Stops” seemed like a bit of an overreaction. The telephone had just started to enter into people’s homes, and E.M. Forster was already worried that society was somehow ruined. He imagined a ridiculous future where people would spend all their time indoors, sitting at machines, while sending short, pithy thoughts to thousands of “friends” they’d never met, and “liking” things as their main source of human interaction.

Sure, this probably sounded paranoid in 1909. After all, it was just a telephone. But today, our reality is almost exactly like the world in “The Machine Stops.” The story’s depiction of long-distance interactions is eerily similar to social media. The idea of having thousands of online friends you’ve never met is a terrifyingly dead-on prediction of Facebook. And the way people in the story send out short, one-sentence thoughts is basically an old-timey Twitter.

But it’s more than just the inventions, though. The whole culture Forster predicted in 1909 is just like ours. For example, Forster portrayed social media as a form of distraction. When the protagonist of the story starts to feel sadness for her son, she’s immediately pulled out of her thoughts by the ability to “like” things. And according to some people, that’s exactly what happens in real life. Some claim that social media really does distract us from our families and emotions by giving us hard-to-ignore jolts of stimulation.

There’s also our attitude toward the outdoors. In the story, going outside for pleasure is considered weird. Now, most people won’t say that out loud, but it does seem to be our view today. According to one study, only about 1 percent of Americans actually participate in nature-based activities.

The final message of the story is that our connection to nature and our families is what brings us happiness, not social media. Similarly, a study of college students showed that heavy Facebook users are more likely to be depressed, so maybe that message hits home for us, too.

For a story written in 1909, the overlaps are incredible. The only thing Forster got wrong was that he thought some robotic dictator would force us into this scenario. In reality, we were happy to do it ourselves.

When Isaac Asimov wrote “The Fun They Had,” he wasn’t really worried about any particular issue. Actually, he only wrote this story—a tale of kids learning on computers—as a favor for a friend. But what might’ve seemed inconsequential in Asimov’s time is quickly becoming a reality today.

The story tells about a future where children learn exclusively at home, on computers. When the computers break down, the kids find out that students used to learn in classrooms, and suddenly, they begin wondering about “the fun they had” in the past.

We aren’t quite at that point yet, but we’re getting there. When Asimov penned this tale, all education took place in classrooms, and barely anyone was homeschooled. Today, the rate of homeschooled kids has tripled to nearly two million in America alone.

Learning on computers is becoming a reality, too. As of 2011, 30 percent of all college students were learning via the Internet. But it’s not just limited to adults, though. Schools are already promoting online, computer-based teaching in nurseries. According to advocates, this will soon be the norm.

When you think of Asimov’s time period, this was a truly crazy prediction. In the 1950s, personal computers didn’t even exist, and the idea of giving up school must’ve seemed fairly far-fetched. But today, the technological innovations that Asimov wrote about are quickly becoming the way we learn.

Ray Bradbury’s “Marionettes, Inc.” is a little silly.

In this short story, two men have such a hard time putting up with their wives’ affections that they buy look-alike robots to stand in for themselves at home. But the twist is that the women like the robots better than their husbands. And in the end, the main character is stuffed into a crate and permanently replaced by the robo-hubby.

On its face, this sounds pretty ridiculous. It’s not like we’re so unwilling to put a little work into our relationships that we’d replace our partners with dolls . . . are we?

Well, in Japan, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Japan is dealing with an epidemic of growing disinterest in sex. Currently, 61 percent of unmarried Japanese men have never dated anyone, and 45 percent of women between the ages of 16 and 24 say they have no interest in having sex whatsoever. So why did half of Japan lose interest in having relationships with other people? Because it’s too hard.

Experts have consistently blamed this phenomenon of so-called “herbivore” asexuals on people just giving up. Things are so serious that one economic analyst actually proposed a tax hike on sexually attractive people. He hopes this will give uglier men a chance when it comes to dating, thus increasing the national birthrate.

But while these “herbivores” say they have no interest in sex, that’s not exactly true. While they might not put in the effort necessary to attract human girls, they’re perfectly happy to start romantic relationships with artificial ones. These men spend their time playing with virtual girlfriends on computers, purchasing erotic figurines of cartoon characters, or dating “waifus”—pillows with pictures of girls on them.

This phenomenon isn’t just limited to Japan, either. America has “iDollators,” men who have given up on attracting human women. Instead, they’ve “married” realistic sex dolls, as seen in the video above.

There’s something about “Marionettes, Inc.” that feels like Bradbury just wrote it for a laugh. But weirdly enough, we’re suddenly living in a world where life-like dolls really are creeping into our bedrooms.

In 1964, Rod Serling wrote a Twilight Zone episode that ended with one its trademark twists. The episode focuses on Wallace V. Whipple, a man who fires the employees at his manufacturing company and replaces them with robots. In the episode’s ironic ending, Whipple ends up getting replaced by a robot himself.

Similar to many other Twilight Zone episodes, “The Brain Center at Whipple’s” actually predicted the future. First of all, while robot factories are completely a thing these days, you might not realize how space-age they are. We’re far past the point where we just have a few machines and computers to make the job easier. More and more, factories are increasingly operated by robots, just like Serling predicted.

Experts are predicting that, over the next 20 years, we are going to see about 50 percent of all jobs disappear. But we’re not just talking about factory jobs, and that’s what’s so spot-on about “The Brain Center at Whipple’s.” Just like Wallace V. Whipple, the managers who had us replaced are starting to be replaced by robots themselves.

A computer program has been created and tested that not only chooses employees, but it actually seems to make better hiring decisions than humans do. When the program was put in charge of picking who to hire, its top choices stayed on the staff for an average of 29 days longer than the other applicants. So for those you at Amazon who are losing jobs to delivery drones, take a little comfort. The robots are coming for your boss, too.

The world changed after America invented the atomic bomb. This terrifying weapon wreaked such destruction that it brought an end to World War II. It also gave us a world where America was a superpower, and nations carried enough weapons to destroy the planet, thus giving rise to the Cold War. And when that icy conflict ended, it left us in an era where the US patrols other countries, limiting their access to weapons of mass destruction in the name of peace.

That’s not a history lesson. That’s a summary of Robert Heinlein’s story “Solution Unsatisfactory,” written before the Manhattan Project even began.

Heinlein wrote this story before the US had entered World War II. The plot was inspired—according to Heinlein—by an editor asking him to write a story about “radioactive dust” being used as a weapon. But the weird thing about “Solution Unsatisfactory” isn’t that Heinlein got the atomic bomb right. (In fact, he thought it would be more like a biological weapon.) It’s that he predicted the next 60 years of history almost perfectly.

Like Heinlein guessed, the introduction of nuclear weaponry caused us to live in constant terror of imminent nuclear destruction. During the Cold War, children even watched “edutainment” videos on how to survive an apocalypse as part of a regular school curriculum. But Heinlein’s story goes even further. He warns of a future when America would play the part of world police.

In his story, America holds enough weapons to destroy the entire planet. It then uses them to create a “Peace Patrol” that forces everyone else to give up their militaries. It’s almost exactly what’s happening today, with America’s current efforts to keep countries like Iran from becoming nuclear powers.

Heinlein ends his story by warning that America probably won’t be able to keep up its role as international peace officer, and the world will probably destroy itself. That should be a pretty troubling prediction, given how much of the future Heinlein actually got right.

However, the only thing he didn’t predict is how complacent we’d become to this dystopian life. Heinlein ended his story by writing, “I can’t be happy in a world where any man, or group of men, has the power of death over you and me.” And really, whether we talk about it or not, that’s the world we live in right now. Only we’ve just learned to go on with it, to stop worrying and love the dystopia.

If you want proof that our culture has become obsessed with nostalgia, just log onto Buzzfeed. You don’t have to search hard to find an article with a title like “Only ’90s Kids Will Remember This.”

The Twilight Zone warned us about this problem, too. The 1961 episode “Static” tells the story of a man in his late 50s who finds an old radio that only plays programs from his childhood. He becomes obsessed with the radio, and he won’t do anything but listen to it. Soon, his friends become worried about his mental health, and they take his radio away.

Does that sound familiar? The radio is basically Nickelodeon’s TV station that only plays ‘90s shows, or any other “retro TV” station or website devoted to pop culture, for that matter. Basically, every aspect of our entertainment is obsessed with the past.

Take movies, for example. Josh Kurp of Uproxx looked at the top 10 grossing movies for each year since 1990. He found that, out of every hit so far this decade, there are only six that aren’t remakes or sequels. It seems we’re perpetually revisiting our childhood, just like the man by the radio. And this might be more of an issue than we realize.

Originally, “nostalgia” was a mental illness, not something we were supposed to take pride in. The word came about to describe a crippling longing for the past, which in turn leads to depression. These days, some worry that we’re getting stuck in a rut because of our focus on the past, both artistically and culturally. Perhaps, like the man in the Twilight Zone episode, we’re all sitting by a machine, playing back our past memories . . . and perhaps that’s a problem.

Fahrenheit 451 is about more than just burning books. It’s about a culture that willingly gives up on its intellectualism and social connections, all thanks to TV. Sure, nobody is setting books on fire right now, but some other parts of the novel are eerily similar to our reality today.

In the book, the hero’s wife, Mildred, spends most of her time watching a “parlor family” on TV as they play out their ordinary lives. She seems more emotionally invested in these characters than she is in her own family. Mildred insists that she has an obligation to keep up with what they’re doing, and she ignores her husband to focus on the show, even putting “audible seashells” in her ears to shut off the world around her.

It’s eerily close to modern reality TV shows, especially ones like the Kardashians. People today have a weirdly deep level of knowledge about that family. If you visit the right websites, you can find daily updates on everything the Kardashians are doing. Some people have, at least in a half-kidding tone, even admitted to knowing more about these socialites than their own families.

Bradbury’s “audible seashells” are real, too. Only today, they’re in the form of earphones. That’s more than just a technological prediction, though. These buds have changed society, just as Bradbury assumed they would.

Headphones have been credited with changing the world of art by removing its social requirements. Where music was once a public art, people now have their own tastes because they listen to their iPods alone. And people often put on headphones as a way of saying, “Don’t bother me. I want to be alone.” So while we aren’t burning books yet, it’s probably because we’d have to gather with other people first.

John Brunner’s 1972 book, The Sheep Look Up, warns of a world ravaged by pollution. The people in the story use water filters to drink, and only the poorest risk drinking tap water. They wear masks when they go outside in order to survive the smog. And chemicals have absolutely devastated both water and land.

If you live in China, this might just sound like a news report.

Modern China has turned into the exact place Brunner described. People in China exclusively drink purchased water because it’s unsafe to drink from the tap. Even the poor avoid tap water if possible, since major health problems can occur if you drink anything that comes out of a Chinese sink.

And, yes, people wear masks outside. But things have gone even further than most people would expect. Air pollution in Beijing has recently reached what’s being called “doomsday levels” or the “airpocalypse.” Pollution there is 18 times higher than the safe level, making it an absolute necessity to don a mask.

One of the most extreme cases of pollution can be found in the waters of Qingdao. Due to chemicals, the water has been overrun with so much green algae that it completely covers the surface. It’s an absolute catastrophe with apocalyptic implications, but for the people in China, it’s just everyday life. Because that’s all you can do when you live in a dystopia. Just carry on.