History CrapsackWorld / Literature

* ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'': In this TieInNovel to Disney's ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans' home country, the Southern Isles, has been transformed into a PoliceState by his EvilOverlord [[TheCaligula father,]] a cruel dictator that routinely uses violence to solve problems he hates. In one case, his [[DisproportionateRetribution "solution"]] to a farmer's problem was to torch their barn and confiscate their livestock, while regime critics are beaten up (and possibly executed). Hans [[EveryoneHasStandards was also left unnerved]] when the king asked him for a report on how the revenue was [[DeadlyEuphemism "obtained"]] from a village that was behind on its taxes. For these reasons, Hans hated being the king's gofer, though he also knew that if he wanted to leave his home permanently without anybody knowing, he would have to be in his father's good graces in order to leave the Southern Isles.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant ''actually enjoy'' working for its intelligence apparatus. Beatings, slavery, and extrajudicial killings are commonly used by Soviet authorities to crush political undesirables and defectors. If the government wanted to [[ThePurge wipe out suspected "enemies of the state" en masse]] as it did during the Great Purge, then it has no qualms doing so again. The book also states that no average Joe would dare utter [[TheDreaded SMERSH's]] name at all in the open lest they face [[SecretPolice the KGB]] knocking at their door. In short, the people in Soviet Russia have no stomach for a possible revolt.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant ''actually enjoy'' working for its intelligence apparatus. Beatings, forced labor, and extrajudicial killings are commonly used by Soviet authorities to crush political undesirables and defectors from the regime. Also, if the government wanted to [[ThePurge wipe out suspected "enemies of the state" en masse]] as it did during the Great Purge, then it has no qualms doing so again. The book also describes that no ordinary citizen would dare utter [[TheDreaded SMERSH's]] name at all in the open lest they face [[SecretPolice the KGB]] knocking at their door. All in all, the average Joe in Soviet Russia has no stomach for a possible revolt.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant (who willingly defected from England) actually enjoy working for its intelligence apparatus. Beatings, forced labor, and extrajudicial killings are some of the things routinely used by Soviet authorities to get rid of real (and perceived) dissenters against the regime. Plus, before joining SMERSH, Red Grant worked as an executioner during full moons. Also, if the government wanted to [[ThePurge wipe out suspected "enemies of the state" en masse]] as it did during the Great Purge, then it has no qualms doing so again.

* ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'': In this TieInNovel to Disney's ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans' home country, the Southern Isles, has been transformed into a PoliceState by his EvilOverlord [[TheCaligula father,]] who is a cruel dictator that routinely uses violence to solve problems he hates, including one incident where his response to a farmer's problem was to burn their farm and confiscate their livestock as DisproportionateRetribution, while in another case, Hans is ordered to beat up (and possibly execute) a peasant who insulted the king. Hans [[EveryoneHasStandards was also left unnerved]] when the king asked him for a report on how the tax revenue was [[DeadlyEuphemism "obtained"]] from a village that was behind on its taxes. For these reasons, Hans hated being the king's gofer, though he also knew that if he wanted to leave his home permanently without anybody knowing, he would have to be in his father's good graces in order to leave the Southern Isles.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant (who willingly defected from England) actually enjoy working for its intelligence apparatus. Beatings, forced labor, and extrajudicial killings are some of the things routinely used by Soviet authorities to get rid of real (and perceived) dissenters against the regime. Plus, before joining SMERSH, Red Grant worked as an executioner during full moons. Also, if the government had a need to wipe out suspected "enemies of the state" all at once as it did during the Great Purge, then it has no qualms doing so again.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant (who willingly defected from England) actually enjoy working for its intelligence apparatus. Beatings, forced labor, purges, and extrajudicial killings are some of the things routinely used by Soviet authorities to get rid of real (and perceived) dissenters against the regime. Plus, before joining SMERSH, Red Grant worked as an executioner during full moons. Also, if the government had a need to wipe out suspected "enemies of the state" all at once as it did during the Great Purge, then it has no qualms doing so again.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant (who willingly defected from England) actually enjoy working for its intelligence apparatus. Beatings, forced labor, purges, and extrajudicial killings are some of the things routinely used by Soviet authorities to get rid of real (and perceived) dissenters against the regime. Plus, before joining SMERSH, Red Grant worked as an executioner during full moons.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant actually enjoy working for SMERSH. In fact, beatings and extrajudicial violence are routinely used by Soviet authorities to crush dissenters and defectors. The government also has no qualms [[ThePurge violently purging millions]] and sending them to Gulags (labor camps in Siberia), where they'll either be condemned to forced labor or summarily executed. Plus, before joining SMERSH, Red Grant worked as an executioner during full moons.

* ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'': Creator/IanFleming spends ''ten chapters'' outlining how life in the Soviet Union sucks, and how only the most depraved of sociopaths such as Red Grant actually enjoy working for its intelligence community. In fact, beatings-up, forced kidnappings, and extrajudicial killings are routinely used by Soviet authorities to crush dissenters and defectors. The government also has no qualms [[ThePurge violently purging millions and sending them to Gulags (labor camps in Siberia), where they'll either be condemned to forced labor or summarily executed. Plus, before joining SMERSH, Red Grant worked as an executioner, and was allowed as many executions as there were candidates available.

* ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'': In this TieInNovel to Disney's ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans' home country, the Southern Isles, has been transformed into a PoliceState by his EvilOverlord [[TheCaligula father,]] who is a cruel dictator that routinely uses violence to solve problems he hates, including one incident where his response to a farmer's problem was to burn their farm and confiscate their livestock as DisproportionateRetribution, while in another case, Hans is sent down to beat up a peasant who insulted the king. Hans [[EveryoneHasStandards was also left unnerved]] when the king asked him for a report on how the tax revenue was [[DeadlyEuphemism "obtained"]] from a village that was behind on its taxes. For these reasons, Hans hated being the king's gofer, though he also knew that if he wanted to leave his home permanently without anybody knowing, he would have to be in his father's good graces in order to leave the Southern Isles.

* The world of ''Literature/TheGiverQuartet''. Either you live in a technologically advanced utopia that is tightly controlled, or a medieval tech level village where you can suffer cruelty from the forces of man, nature, or both.
* In ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime'' and its sequels there are several crapsack worlds, and alternate futures in which Earth is a crapsack world.
** ''A Wrinkle in Time'' itself features Camazotz, a world so conformist and authoritarian it makes [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Ingsoc]] look like a utopia. People are so rigorously controlled, failing to bounce a ball in exact time with every other child on the planet gets you thrown in a torture chamber, and catching the common cold gets you euthanized.
** ''Literature/ASwiftlyTiltingPlanet'' (the second sequel) has Charles Wallace and his flying unicorn twice landing in "projections" -- crapsack possible future worlds.
* What do you think about living in ''Literature/{{The Passage}}'', where the majority of human population has been wiped out (possibly everyone outside North America, and mostly everyone in North America), there are superhuman zombie-vampires who are far stronger than humans, too fast to aim at and you turn into one of them after being bitten in one of five cases - and are simply devoured in other four? Oh, and all of them are controlled by several Big Bads who are using most remaining humans as a cattle, and strong light is only effective defense you have?
* In Jay Kristoff's ''Stormdancer'', the Shima islands are flowing with pollution, an evil shogun is power-hungry and selfish, and "impure" people are being executed by a group of religious zealots called "The Lotus Guild." How can one girl and a flightless griffin set things right again?
* ''Literature/{{Fahrenheit 451}}''. The entire world is an Film/{{idiocracy}} that subscribes to a nihilistic and hedonistic ideology which boils down to "[[KillItWithFire If you have problems, don't face them, burn them!]]" Nuclear war is so prevalent that the sound of jets flying off to nuke entire cities out of existence isn't even commented on. Television has taken the place of the family. Drug use is so ubiquitous that a single EMT team will likely deal with upwards of a dozen [=ODs=] a night. Running over pedestrians and crashing cars a la ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' is the new national pastime. Being a bookworm and engaging in other intellectual activities will make the ignorant masses feel unhappy and is punishable by having your house and possessions burned down. Resisting having your house burnt down will result in a giant mechanical spider hunting you down and killing you.
* ''Literature/GatheringBlue'': After [[AfterTheEnd The Ruin]] the book's community has been reduced to a barbaric society, with technology at pre-industrial levels.
* ''Literature/ChildhoodsEnd'': This Creator/ArthurCClarke novel deals with [[spoiler: the end of humanity as we know it, shepherded along by alien overlords. Children are entering a new state of consciousness and in the process becoming something distinctly non-human in the way to their [[AssimilationPlot meld with the overmind of the universe]]. The remaining generation of adults, who are dying off without being able to reproduce, band together and go through the stages of grief as the death of human civilization approaches fast. World religions and cultures crumble with a whimper. Pretty sad.]]
* Most of the ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' universe, especially the Sprawl and Chiba City.
* In ''Literature/TheSundered'', the whole world's flooded with water... that eats people! The only technology left is old and rusting, and the only way anybody survives is by abusing psychic mutant slaves, which are dying out.

* [[WretchedHive Earth]] in ''[[Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy Night's Dawn]]''. The environment was completely wrecked; giant storms rage across the surface, forcing all cities to built giant [[DomedHometown domes]] to protect themselves. Overpopulation is so great that the anything much greater than jaywalking will cause you to be sent as a indentured servant/slave to a colony world. And the Government ''allows'' the crime cults to thrive in the lower parts of the cities.
* ''Literature/TheLastDragon'' takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where it never stops raining, which means it's hard to grow crops that won't drown, which means a lot of people go hungry. Worse, there's some heavy FantasticRacism and a terribly oppressive pseudo-feudal society.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' and its television adaptation, ''Series/GameOfThrones''. The nobility are busy squabbling over the throne of the largest single geopolitical bloc in the continent of Westeros, all while hideous monsters in the far North are waking from their long sleep and will likely invade... and, almost nobody is preparing for it. Also, most of the ordinary people are routinely treated ''horribly''. Many nobles think nothing of raping or murdering them, and they also have to worry about dying of starvation when not conscripted to fight in agriculture-destroying wars they know little about. [[FromBadToWorse And winter is coming.]]
** The continent of Essos is no better: part of it is ''still'' a smoking, glowing ruin from a major volcanic catastrophe that wiped a thriving empire off the map over four hundred years ago and thus is [[ForbiddenZone completely uninhabitable]], unless you can bathe in lava and like sulphurous steam rooms -- every known (and confirmed) expedition/ army sent to the peninsula of Valayria to try taking it back, looting it or just trying to find out what happened... has been lost. To the last man. Other places in Essos have such hopeful names as [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace "The Shadow Lands", "The Bone Mountains"]] and "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Slavers' Bay]]", others are rumored to be suffering the equivalent of low-level magical fallout and/or plague of some sort... and the rest? Is mainly a patchwork of city states and would-be empires that have all seen better days, all loosely linked by that aforementioned slave-trade economy focused around Slaver's Bay, all compounded by hordes of marauding semi-nomads living in the grasslands between the states having to be fended off by bribes or they'll attack. And, the less said about the continent of Sothoryos, the better: it was Ground Zero to something ''truly'' nasty enough to make the Doom of Valyria look like child's play. There are only some islands well off the coast and, maybe, two or three cities even ''vaguely'' inhabitable left. Very little is known of what happened, since trying to survive long enough to dig through and investigate that verdant, pestilence-ridden, red-in-tooth-and-claw hellscape is practically impossible for baseline humans.
** After the show's fifth season, where the TV series caught up on the books [[ScheduleSlip and the next is still on the way]], chunks of the fanbase have become [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy so overwhelmed by how bleak things got]] they are actively [[RootingForTheEmpire preferring to see said hideous monsters just kill everyone]] instead of [[CharactersDroppingLikeFlies whatever cruel fate the author and the showrunners have planned.]]
* In ''Literature/TheWhiteTiger'', there's The Darkness, where all the poverty-stricken people reside.
* ''Literature/HouseOfTheScorpion'' is set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, where Mexico is under control of the corrupt quasi-communist Keepers, and life in the United States is so bad, that not only are people crossing the border into the United States, but ''into Mexico'' as well.

* A dramatic fantasy example would be the setting of ''Literature/TheFirstLaw''. The kingdom is run by a secret police, many of the main characters are murderers and cutthroats, AristocratsAreEvil, the Wise Old Mentor likes to blow people up, the peasants are oppressed and the city-folk are slimy.
** The book ends with [[spoiler:pretty much no positive changes in the world, a figurehead Jezal as King of the Union, Logen still on the run, Ferro returning to her vengeance-seeking ways, and Bayaz turning out to be the biggest jerk in history.]]
*** [[spoiler: And Jezal gets kicked hard when his change of heart and indications he wants to make a got of the 'king' situation results in Bayaz reminding him who's running the show. Ouch.]]

* The titular Edge in the obscure fantasy series ''Literature/TheEdgeChronicles'' isn't exactly an ideal spot for a vacation. The Deepwoods are dark and extremely dangerous, the Twilight Woods are a cursed place where anyone who enters will most likely go insane, the Mire is a polluted wasteland, Undertown is a dirty, overcrowded slum, Sanctaphrax is "a seething cauldron of rivalries, plots and counter-plots and bitter faction-fighting", the river Edgewater is choked with sewage and the lands along the rim of the Edge are a desolate barren.
** Things get worse in the ''Rook Barkwater'' series. The city becomes even worse, slavery returns, Sanctaphrax becomes grounded and taken over by Nazi-like fanatics, all of the sky pirates are gone, and 95% of the "good" characters from previous books are either jailed or dead.
*** And later, both Sanctaphrax and Undertown get destroyed. But it's okay, just about everyone except the Guardians of Night and [[FatBastard Vox]] escaped.
*** By the end of the series, civilization has relocated to the Freeglades, and things are looking much, much better for everyone.
* Stephen Baxter's ''Literature/XeeleeSequence'' -- hundreds of thousands of years of humanity in a massive HopelessWar of attrition against [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens the Xeelee]], who are also fighting a race of dark matter beings who want to render the universe unfit for baryonic life (like humanity). [[spoiler:They lose. First the humans, then the Xeelee. Might be subverted, though, in that Xeelee knew they couldn't win and so spent all of time (and we do mean "all of time" literally) creating a method to leave the universe into one better suited for our type of life. They succeeded and even allowed the remnants of humanity to use it.]]
* Patrick Suskind's ''Literature/{{Perfume}}''. Everyone is either motivated by greed, selfishness, lust or desire for fame, or callous and apathetic to their fellow human beings. Grenouille, a twisted little troll of a man who ''kills women for their scent'', actually comes across as the most sympathetic character in the whole book - at least he's motivated by a desire to create something beautiful, in the absence of anything else to give his life meaning.
* ''Literature/TheJungle'' by Upton Sinclair. Anything which can go wrong, will in the [[NightmarishFactory Packingtown]]. The FridgeHorror is, of course, that an investigation revealed all the claims of Sinclair ''valid'', except [[HumanResources rendering workers falling in processing vats into lard and fertilizer]].
* ''Literature/HarrisonBergeron'', by Creator/KurtVonnegut, in which any person who has any kind of talent is handicapped to prevent them from excelling and thus making other people feel inferior. The main character is smart, tall, strong, and handsome, so his handicaps include headphones that play distracting noises, three hundred pounds of weight strapped to his body, forty pounds of birdshot around his neck, eyeglasses designed to give him headaches, and a rubber ball on his nose, black caps on his teeth, and shaven eyebrows to hide his beauty. [[spoiler:He rebels and dies, and his parents are too handicapped to be aware of watching their own son shot on television.]]
** In fact, lots of Creator/KurtVonnegut's books either have the world heading for disaster (imminent or eventual), or illustrate how crapsacky the world is even ''without'' the [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt end]] looming.
* Creator/FlanneryOConnor had issues. Just about her entire body of work involves unbelievably flawed, unsympathetic characters feuding and bickering with each other, finishing with a tragic, often gruesome climax, usually the consequences of their actions. Of course, since all of her stories were written while she was dying of lupus, this might explain her outlook. Considered one of the premier authors of Southern Gothic literature, which is an entire ''genre'' of this trope.
** However, given O'Connor's strong belief in the redemptive power of suffering, she certainly didn't see it this way. For example, in response to a fellow Catholic who wondered why she couldn't use her considerable talents to write something "uplifting", she said, "If your heart had been right place, you would have been uplifted."
* India in the Creator/AlanDeanFoster novel ''Sagramanda''. Rampant poverty, the poor attacking people to get money, greedy corporations that just leave it that way, a man eating tiger just left alone, multiple hit men, and an insane serial murderer feature prominently, as does somebody who tries to kill his own son because of the caste system.

* The late Robert Asprin edited a series of short fantasy anthologies with multiple spinoffs known as ''Literature/ThievesWorld.'' All of the anthologized stories were written for the series, and set in a common WorldHalfEmpty. At least it started out as one; it later got much, much worse.
** His ''Cold Cash War'', about corporate-sponsored mercenaries, also depicted an extremely grim and violent world, so much so that he started writing the light comedy series ''Literature/MythAdventures'' to cheer himself up in contrast.
* ''Search the Sky'' by Creator/FrederikPohl and Cyril Kornbluth. [[spoiler:Halsey's Planet is slowly depopulating itself, Gemser is an insane gerontocracy where age is the sole factor in determining status, Azor is a StrawFeminist world where believing in gender equality is a crime against the state, Jones is a world where conformity in everything (including appearance, architecture, dress, and habits) is mandatory, and Earth is a coin-operated world where intelligence is frowned on. And all colony worlds are inbred because there were too few original colonists for each world.]]

* ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'':
** Played straight whenever a king falls from the way; their kingdom is overrun by man-eating beasts, volcanoes erupt and the earth cracks open, snow buries villages in the middle of summer, monsters swim up from the depths to devour ships, it rains frogs and locusts consume crops for miles, plagues wipe out whole villages in a single night, typhoons flatten forests and... well, you get the general idea.
** On the inverse side, if a king rules justly, a kingdom can prosper and greatly avoid being attacked by Youma. En, for instance, is a very good place to live under its current king and has been so for 500 years (though there are still some less pleasant people around). It's more of a WorldHalfFull, since the evil can be held back when people are good and just (contrast to most examples, where the good simply ''can't'' win for any significant period of time). It also has the [[IncorruptiblePurePureness twelve Kirin]], who do their best to advise their [[HumansAreFlawed less-than-perfect human monarchs]].
* Almost anything by Patricia Highsmith. The [[PointOfView POV]] characters of her books are generally either {{Villain Protagonist}}s who [[KarmaHoudini get away with it]], or pathetic losers who suffer horribly at the hands of unspeakable villains who [[KarmaHoudini get away with it]]. She did, however, write a surprisingly positive lesbian love story called ''The Price of Salt.''
* The ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' universe sometimes headed in this directoin. It's less intense than in other examples, but still, whenever the peaceful, freedom-loving institution of the moment manages to get the upper hand and finally look like it's going to turn things for the better, ''something'' happens that screws everything up and plunges the whole galaxy right back in the darkness of endless war. After the Empire there's Ysanne Isard, then Thrawn, then the Emperor reincarnates, then he reincarnates ''again'', then the Imperial Remnant reunites under Daala and starts messing up the place again. Then the cult of Ragnos springs up, then the Yevetha set out to destroy everyone, then there are several more attempts to restore the Empire... and all this in only twenty years. And when the galaxy finally seems to have some peace and things seem to be looking brighter, the Yuuzhan Vong invade and start a war that kills trillions. Then there's ''another'' civil war. Then the Empire and the Sith rise ''yet again''. Seriously, how people from the Star Wars galaxy ever wish for anything but a quick, painless death is a mystery.
** This is an example of most ''Franchise/{{Star Wars|Expanded Universe}}'' authors wanting to tell the [[BetterByADifferentName same story]] while hoping to avoid [[ContinuitySnarl problems with the continuity]]. The solution? Do the same thing a few years later.
** It really depends on the book and the author. The [[BittersweetEnding ending]] of ''Literature/OutboundFlight'' aside, Creator/TimothyZahn's novels, for example, tend to stay true to the original feel - there are dark times, but there is also joy and beauty and hope and adventure, and nothing is completely, unambiguously terrible. In some novels it's almost a [[WhiteAndGreyMorality white and grey]] contrast between the good guys and the bad guys, and the Empire is never some monolithic evil structure - it's made of people who are trying their hardest to do what they think is right.
*** Of course, Zahn-bashing is more popular now. His characters are being systematically killed off and his preference for EverybodyLives, where the tension comes not from ''who dies next'' but ''how can they escape'', gets mocked as unrealistic. A lot of old-school EU fans are very selective with canon.
** ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy is a comic book series, but it is set in the same universe as the [=EU=] just set about a century into the future. According to this, after all the aforementioned stuff has been dealt with... it gets worse anyway. [[spoiler: Until it gets better.]]
* Most of Creator/NathanielHawthorne's work is about how much people suck and the world is a horrible place full of evil. For some reason, he's called a Romanticist. Well, a '''Dark''' Romanticist, anyway.

* Whereas the city of Haven in Creator/SimonRGreen's ''Hawk and Fisher'' series is the WretchedHive version, where even the "gods" aren't above greed, mayhem, sociopathy and a host of other antisocial tendencies, but still attract worshippers. His later ''{{Literature/Nightside}}'' series draws heavily on Haven to create a similar setting as part of a hidden version of London.
* Creator/{{Voltaire}}'s ''Literature/{{Candide}}'' disabuses the title character of the notion that he lives in the best of all possible worlds (a popular metaphysical notion of Voltaire's time) by tossing him from one ridiculous misfortune to the next, throughout the entire novel.
** However, though the end leaves Candide a poor peasant working to death for the rest of his life, he does consider that the friendships he got from those misfortunes are evidence that at least this world isn't the ''worst'' of all possible worlds.
*** But it all really doesn't matter--after all, no matter if the world is good or bad, "[[FamousLastWords We must cultivate our garden]]."
* ''Literature/TheRunningMan'' by Creator/StephenKing is set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture in a world where many people are dying of lung cancer due to pollution and cannot even get basic medicine, where the more elite classes are apathetic and everyone is numbed out by watching horrific TV "game shows" where people die for small amounts of money.
* ''Literature/TheRoad'' by Creator/CormacMcCarthy is set AfterTheEnd, in a world where there has been no sunlight for eight years, the forests are dead and falling to the ground, Georgia is as cold as Alaska, and the nights are described as being "as dark as the cellars of Hell". Cannibal cults with female slaves roam the countryside, eating the babies of their women as soon as they give birth, and sometimes 'farming' people in their basements, slowly eating them bit by bit. People are dying from the cold, from some kind of horrible disease that causes them to cough blood until they drop dead, and from starvation, walking through barren farmlands. If this sounds awful that's because, you know, it kind of is.
* The ''Franchise/CthulhuMythos''. An entire universe where Humanity is surrounded by unimaginably horrifying {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, compared to whom we are insignificant ants, and who will plunge all of us into madness, despair, and insignificance when they awaken from their slumber. Plus there's a TrueNeutral race of alien time travellers, who also confirm that humanity will go extinct in a horrible way.
** Pretty much anything written by Creator/HPLovecraft is set in a CrapsackWorld, since he is after all a NietzscheWannabe.
--> '''H. P. Lovecraft''': ''The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either GoMadFromTheRevelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.''
* The basic idea of ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'' is that creatures like those from the Cthulhu Mythos really exist, and that it's only through the efforts of a few top secret organizations that they don't invade our planet. This kind of business can get very, VERY nasty. In the first book alone they only saved the entire universe from being ''eaten'' by the skin of their teeth. And It Gets Worse. Especially when CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN gets brought up: [[spoiler: Basically, there will soon come a time when interdimensional boundaries wear so thin that unspeakable horrors will be able to be summoned by ordinary humans unintentionally, as a product of a particularly horrifying variation of ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve]]. This is so serious, the government considers using the SCORPION STARE program to reduce the world's population by [[TakenForGranite turning random people to stone]] [[GodzillaThreshold a viable solution]].
* Creator/ChinaMieville's world [[Literature/BasLagCycle Bas-Lag]], and especially its apparent largest city, New Crobuzon, featured in his novels in ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'', ''Literature/TheScar'', and ''Literature/IronCouncil'', fits this to a 'T'--if there's a pool of water in the city which is ''not'' stagnant and oily, or any non-corrupt person with any amount of noticeable power, we've not seen it or him.
** There are implied to be nice and happy things in Bas-Lag - Bellis wants to [[spoiler:save New Crobuzon from invasion]] for a reason - but thanks to the particular paths the novels take, we don't see much of them.
* This trope is one of the base premises of a whole genre: {{Cyberpunk}}.
* Played for laughs in ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. Killing billions of people to build a bypass, nothing wrong with that.
** What makes it even more tragically hilarious is that a few chapters later it is revealed that a new propulsion system - the Infinite Improbability Drive - has made hyperspace travel obsolete and no one will be using that bypass. Creator/DouglasAdams knows his tropes.
* ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' includes:
** A lumber mill whose manager apparently has no knowledge of healthcare laws and only pays his employees in chewing gum.
** A boarding school run by a [[CardCarryingVillain card carrying]] SadistTeacher.
** A village full of insane crow worshippers (no, really) who murder anyone who doesn't follow their ridiculous set of laws.
** A circus where the performers are treated like dirt by both their bosses and the spectators.
*** Also not that the circus freaks had abilities most people wouldn't even consider bad or freaky most of the time... like being able to write with both of your hands... I mean... What the hell Villain? That's low even for that type of setting.
* The AncientEgypt of ''Literature/TheEgyptian'' of course, the main point of the novel is how nothing really has changed since then...
* The Creator/MarquisDeSade novel ''Justine'' is pretty horrific. Justine recounts how, at the age of twelve, she asked for shelter in a man's house and was told that she could only stay if she would have sex with him. The person she talks about this to ''screams at her'' for being a parasite that wanted something for nothing. Mind you, this is essentially the ''high point'' of the story -- it gets much, much worse for the poor girl as it goes on.
** The world of pretty much all of Sade's work in general qualifies as this big time. Anyone who isn't a bastard in his works is either a hypocrite or a victim. Given his general HumansAreBastards worldview, this isn't too surprising.
* Creator/AlastairReynolds' ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' series fits this trope very well. By ''Absolution Gap'', the third novel, the series is pretty much a hard SF version of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''.
* The ''Edge the Loner'' pulp western series by George G. Gilman featured a Wild West so violent and corrupt that the sociopathic walking scar called Edge may have been the only man strong enough to survive it. Inspired by the Eastwood/ Leone spaghetti westerns, the Edge books may well have inspired the equally vile western settings of Creator/VertigoComics' ''ComicBook/{{Preacher}}'' and ''ComicBook/JonahHex'' series.
* ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}'' features a world that starts out a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by an EvilOverlord. Ash falls from the sky constantly and the majority of people (called Skaa) are effectively slaves. [[spoiler: After the heroes kill the Lord Ruler, things start getting ''worse'', especially when the local OmnicidalManiac gets released from [[SealedEvilInACan his can]]. [[SubvertedTrope But Vin and Sazed manage to fix it in the end]]]].
* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'' (also in Literature/TheCosmere like Mistborn), was this for thousands of years. Periodically [[ApocalypseHow The Desolations]] would occur, forcing humanity to battle for survival against the demonic Voidbringers. Desolations were so severe that humanity was typically on the edge of extinction and knocked nearly back to the Stone Age, with the [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Heralds]] who lead them uncertain if humanity would even know how to make bronze upon their return. This is, however, subverted by the fact that there hasn't been a Desolation in nearly four thousand years, and humanity is currently more advanced that it has ever been before.
* Most residents of Camorr, a sort of LowFantasy medieval Venice turned UpToEleven in Scott Lynch's ''Literature/TheLiesOfLockeLamora'', would pay good money (doubtless stolen or extorted) to live in a CrapsackWorld instead.

* Let's discuss ''[[Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith Zothique]]''. It's the last inhabited continent--all the others either had all their inhabitants slaughtered, or sank beneath the sea. Technology has been smashed back to the level of bows and arrows. Zul-Bha-Sair, one of the better locations, is ruled by the "Charnel God" Mordiggian. Naat, meanwhile, is run by particularly nasty necromancers, and Uccastrog is also known as "[[TortureTechnician The Isle of the Torturers]]." A typical story in the setting, "The Last Hieroglyph," sets up a standard [[TheHerosJourney heroic journey]] that turns out to be [[spoiler:to the fate of all living things: being stored as a hieroglyph on a god's record of the world, which will be complete on the approaching day when everything in the setting is wiped out.]] For added fun, the author and his buddies loved shared-universe fiction, so this is the future of the above-mentioned Franchise/CthulhuMythos, which is the future of the above-mentioned [[Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian Cimmeria]], so the inhabitants were actually ''lucky'' that they weren't all eaten by {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.
* Early Robert Cormier stories like ''The Bumblebee Flies Anyway'' are set in either AWorldHalfFull, or this, depending on how you look at it--we're all doomed, but at least God is reasonably benign. His later stories fall squarely into this trope--good people are doomed, bad people usually [[KarmaHoudini rise and prosper]], and according to ''In the Middle of the Night'', we're headed for TheNothingAfterDeath. Standard heroes are often set up, then subverted, like Jerry Renault of ''Literature/TheChocolateWar'', [[spoiler:who's set up to fight TheBrute and gets sent to the hospital, having achieved nothing]], or the Avenger in ''We All Fall Down'', a [[KidHero pint-size]] VigilanteMan [[spoiler:who's actually [[TomatoSurprise fully adult]] and [[AxeCrazy completely insane]].]]
* K.J Parker's ''Literature/TheScavengerTrilogy''. Life is hard, short and mired in failure. There is less and less secure government, and you don't want to know what is driving what order there is.
* ''Literature/LeftBehind'', during the last 7 years of humanity, people get to experience at frequent intervals: worldwide earthquake, 1/3 of the world's water supply turning into deadly poison or blood, utter darkness covering the Earth, hail of fire, plague of giant locusts whose bite cause painful boils for 6 months (those bitten are rendered immortal temporarily to prevent suicide), deathly cold, deathly heat, and then the Prince of Darkness himself gets in on the fun...
** For the believers in the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation, to a certain extent, it becomes a CozyCatastrophe as God provides protection for them and their equipment while everyone else suffers. Bloody rivers? God provides clean water. Sun-baking heat that scorches everything? Not if you're a believer. Pitch-black darkness in New Babylon? God will at least provide some level of visibility. The world's economic system crashing with the destruction of New Babylon? God has the believers covered in that area. Oh yeah, don't forget to look up, believers, because your redemption draws near!
** The crapsackness returns in ''Kingdom Come'' as [[LaResistance the Other Light faction]] amasses a huge army of converts at the latter end of the Millennium to [[FinalBattle overthrow God and Jesus]] when [[SealedEvilInACan Satan is released]]. Fortunately, this doesn't last as [[CurbStompBattle Satan's entire army is smoked into ashes in seconds,]] [[HumiliationConga Satan is forced to bow before Jesus Christ and confess Him as Lord before being sent to the Lake of Fire,]] and [[ApocalypseHow the entire material universe is destroyed]] prior to God creating the "new heavens and new earth".
* ''Literature/AmericanPsycho'' and other works by Creator/BretEastonEllis. Everybody is completely shallow and selfish, and they're usually too dense to notice how empty and meaningless their lives are.
* The ''Literature/ParrishPlessis'' series takes place in one. Parrish tries her best to improve things, she really does, but [[DiabolusExMachina Diabolus]] strikes at every turn, and the series' ending leaves open the possibility that all her efforts have only made things worse.
* Modern day Britain in ''Literature/NoughtsAndCrosses'', a rare example of a functional world where although everyone can get enough to eat and can live well there is so much prejudice against non-African descended races that if you don't have dark skin, you will probably spend your life only having the most basic things on offer.
* The world of ''Literature/BattleRoyale'', where Japan is part of an isolationist dictatorship, rock music is illegal, there are terrorist groups trying to take down the government... and every year a class of 3rd year high school students are drugged on a school trip and taken to an isolated location, where they are fitted with explosive collars and told that they have to fight to the death. If they refuse to fight to the point where no one dies for 24 hours, then they all die anyway.
* How about Suzanne Collins's ''Literature/TheHungerGames''? North America has collapsed into a totalitarian nightmare which considers watching children slaughter each other on television to be the height of entertaining. People from the satellite states (which supply the children in question) tend to be dirt-poor and will be beaten or killed for pretty much no reason at all. Then you have the arena itself, complete with neurotoxic mists, nightmare-inducing bees ( a.k.a. tracker jackers), giant walls of fire, mad dogs who happen to be templated off your dead friends... did we mention the whole country is required to watch? The rest of the world is conspicuously absent, possibly destroyed in the vaguely implied calamity that brought the government in question to power.
** For a freakin' ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids young adult]]'' novel, the world of Panem is insanely brutal.
** Special mention to the tracker jackers, who were just one species of many, rather horrifying ones created in said government's labs to beat down a revolution over seventy years ago, that the government just let loose and are now running (or buzzing) 'round the countryside, terrorizing people.
** [[spoiler: Even joining the rebels isn't much better. After risking everything following a rumor with risk of being killed or becoming a mute slave of the Capitol, you get to look forward to a civilization where everything must be rationed and everyone works. Cinna's prep team were locked in a dark room in chains and beaten for 'hoarding food.' Even Katniss — the Rebellion's symbol for hope — isn't given much special treatment by Coin. Coin herself is just President Snow playing for the good side. One of her suggestions when they beat the Capitol was to hold a Hunger Games themselves except using Capitol children. Which, other than completely destroying their pampered way of life would give them ample reason to start a rebellion on their own later down the line.]]
* Holly Lisle and her Matrin novels. In the prequel of the books, you have a society of rich, powerful wizards that waste energy like it's nothing and when they run out, they use [[spoiler:the souls of the people of the Warrens, obliterating any chance they have to be reborn.]] The rest of the timeline isn't much better, with a world destroyed by magic, people turned into mutants and those same mutants hunted down and killed in brutal ways.
* [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny Gilead]] in ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'' by Margaret Atwood, a fundamentalist Christian theonomy that has stripped women of most of their rights.
* Tadeusz Borowski calls this the "world of stone," and most of his Holocaust fiction fits into it nicely. The slaughter of innocents becomes not just commonplace, but ''normal'', just another event in an ordinary day. The concentration camp inmates who retain their human decency get killed off, leaving behind only those who're willing to steal and betray others to survive (and even they're subject to their luck running out or [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves their captors no longer needing their assistance]].) Hope itself is an essentially negative force, leading people passively to their fate when, had they completely given up hope, they might have at least [[TakingYouWithMe taken a few of their tormentors with them]].
** On the other hand, every once in a while Borowski sets up the trope and subverts it, as in "The January Offensive," where the narrator's initial arguments in favor of this trope are countered with a more uplifting tale.
* ''Literature/HowToSurviveAZombieApocalypse'': Played with. The usually cryptic ZombieApocalypse scenario has a much lighter note, sometimes PlayedForLaughs.
-->'''Duff:''' Zombies are excellent stylists, if you ask me. They dance the Moonwalk like professionals, make the best cotton candy and even rap faster than Eminem.
* The planet Dosadi in ''Literature/TheDosadiExperiment'' (by Frank Herbert) is so vile and horrid that anyone that wasn't born on the planet is bound to get torn to shreds within a couple of hours. Jorj X. [=McKie=], the protagonist, quickly finds that he must adapt to the mindset of the Dosadi natives if he is to survive his stay on the planet and complete his mission.
* The world of the ''[[Literature/TheWitcher Witcher]]'' books is full of monsters that are often better than the humans they prey on, but are still hunted by the titular Witchers - humans mutated into perfect monster killers - who are hated and loathed by common people. FantasticRacism is everywhere - HumansAreBastards abusing their position of power; Elves, who are forced to live in ghettos, aren't really that much better - other races generally side with Elves but remember that they weren't so nice before the humans conquered them. TheEmpire is conquering other nations with force of arms (and WarIsHell in this setting, by the way) or economics, and it is made clear that [[spoiler: soon after the end of the last book, this world will suffer their equivalent of the Black Death, which the CorruptChurch will blame on magic users, leading to a wizard genocide]]. This world is so corrupt and rotten that [[spoiler: Ciri, who can travel between the worlds, abandons it in the end, which means that when the new ice age comes to wipe everybody out, there won't be any of her descendants to lead the survivors to another world]]. The games, despite being so dark that they're often compared with ''Franchise/DragonAge'', are still LighterAndSofter compared to the books.
* Literature/{{Darwath}} is being invaded by flesh-eating Lovecraftian monsters, but that's just their top problem; also, their world is sliding into an Ice Age, and the Church is zealously destroying the wizards and magic-tech that are the only things that just might save them. Hambly spends three books basically raising hopes in order to dash them. Even when, at the very last minute, [[spoiler:the wizard persuades all the monsters to emigrate to a warmer climate]], that still leaves them with a collapsing ecology and a politico-religious state that makes Afghanistan look like a shining city on a hill.
* In ''Literature/ThePaleKing'', the New Mexico trailer park and the rest of Chapter 8 provide a grim portrayal of a teenage girl trying to survive with her drifter of a mother.
* ''Witch and Wizard:'' Let's see, children ripped from bed in the middle of the night? Check. Evil overlord bent on taking over the world? Check. Said children constantly on the run from said overlord? Check check.
* ''Literature/{{Sunshine}}'' is set in a world where the vampires and other assorted nasties are going to win the war against humans in about a century or so.
* ''Literature/BillTheGalacticHero'''s military system is seemingly designed to make the lives of the enlisted a living hell, from the moment they put their name in the dotted line. In fact, the only reason TheEmpire is even engaged in a war with the "vile [[LizardFolk Chingers]]" is because they needed someone to fight, so they picked a tiny race of peace-loving lizards from a heavy-gravity world. Now the Empire is losing, since the Chingers turn out to be ''very'' good at fighting and, unlike Empire leadership, are not complete morons. They also easily infiltrate the Empire thanks to their human-shaped robots (a tiny Chinger easily fits inside it). Since the public is told that Chingers are human-sized blood-thirsty lizards, they don't know what to look for.
* The world of Literature/Timeline191 may not be a total CrapsackWorld, but it's definitely a much grimmer reality than our own. The United States is forced into geopolitics much sooner, and is never able to develop into the "land of opportunity" that defined its character from the late 19th Century onward. Surrounded by hostile countries, it instead evolves into a slightly less-oppressive version of the Soviet Union, becoming just another player in the global empire-building game. The world is far less idealistic and far more militarized. The most brutal battles of both World Wars take place between the Union and the Confederacy, and [[spoiler: nuclear weapons are used with more abandon. Ironically, Japan is the only major player in this timeline's version of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII ''not'' to have a nuclear bomb dropped on it.]]
* The two 'future worlds' shown in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''. One is in The Stranger and one in The Familiar. Both have the world controlled by the Yeerks, with all humans enslaved, and a lot of Earth's natural flora and fauna destroyed due to Yeerk tendancies.

* ''Literature/DarkFuture'': Welcome to [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture the 1990s]] as envisaged by Creator/GamesWorkshop and Creator/KimNewman. A CyberPunk {{dystopia}} ruled over by mostly corrupt politicians who're in the pocket of [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japanese]] [[MegaCorp megacorp [=GenTech=]]] who may or may not be run by a Nazi refugee, where the population are divided into the rich; who live in [[LawEnforcementInc corporately-policed]] gated communities away from the slums of the poor, waited upon by mostly black slaves because [[AlternateHistory Racial Equality never really happened in this world]]. Where the world is slowly drying out, disappearing beneath rising sea levels and teeters unknowingly on the brink of the Apocalypse that [[ReligionOfEvil an evil faux-Christian sect]] headed by a TimeAbyss in the service of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s are actively seeking to hasten. Oh, and RockAndRoll was banned after riots in 1961; Music/JohnLennon went into politics and people are still buying Ken Dodd albums.
--> ''"Don't worry about the End of the Universe, because you could be the LUCKY WINNER!"''
-->-- '''Elder Roger Duroc''', ''Comeback Tour''
* ''Literature/SomeoneElsesWar'' presents a world both beautiful and horrifying. TruthInTelevision, as it follows a young Muslim boy living at the height of the LRA's terrorization of Uganda.

* In ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'', Arrakis was one to some degree or other for most of the people. And definitely the Harkonnen home planet, Geidi Prime, as detailed even more in some of [[Literature/PreludeToDune the prequels]] (with Gurney Halleck suffering horribly there as a slave child).
** The universe itself would count, as even when Paul is the new Emperor of the known universe, he is unable to stop the Jihad his Fremen have unleashed which result in the deaths of billions of people.
* In Creator/TomHolt's ''Ye Gods!'', Prometheus gives Jason Derry a view of a world without him in order to show why it's so important he sides with him against the JerkassGods. In this world there's no such thing as a joke, everyone lives in fear of the gods all the time, and [[DeadlyGame game shows are deadly]]. Jason's reaction is "''I'' wouldn't want to live there, but I wouldn't want to live in Florida and plenty of people do."
* Wherever Davey Rice goes in ''Jumper'', somebody wants to beat the crap out of him. They often succeed.
* The short story "Transaction" by Redfern Barrett takes place in a city (implied to be Berlin) where every interaction - sex, violence, conversation, breastfeeding - involves a financial transaction. Everything is broken, and people live minute-to-minute attempting to avoid falling into debt.
* Creator/TomKratman:
** In ''Literature/{{Caliphate}}'', much of Continental Europe is undergoing decay under Caliphate rule. The Middle East is a crapsack state as well, as noted by character Besma. The rest of the world isn't much better, with everyone pretty much in a state of hostility to one another that's effectively low-level war punctuated by periods of actual armed combat.
** In the ''Literature/{{Countdown}}'' series it becomes clear that the world is slowly but surely going to hell, and that civilisation is crumbling under the rising tide of barbarism that the governments of the world are either unwilling or unable to try to address.
* Three Zed from ''Literature/FusionFire'' and ''Literature/CrownOfFire'' has a strict eugenics program culling any children who are too compassionate, gentle, friendly, or fearful. On top of that, the political intrigues and power struggles at the top also mean that it's rather easy to get on someone's bad side, those who aren't at the top are likely to be manipulated and used against their will for the leaders' plans (including for suicide missions), and resistance to orders means death.
* ''Z Is for Zombie'' by Adam-Troy Castro and illustrated by Johnny Atomic. As the introduction puts it:
-->"The truth is that something primal has changed during the night. There have been dark negotiations between those we exalt as gods and those we fear as demons. Treaties have been rewritten. Borders have been redrawn. The territories that once belonged to the realm of life now belong on the wrong side of death. For those of us living on Earth its a lot like learning that the government has decided to plow under our homes and neighborhoods using the right of eminent domain, except there's no warning and no appeal and no compensation and no other place to go. Yes. This is unfair. It certainly sucks to be us."
* ''Literature/TheLeonardRegime'' takes place in a world where everybody is controlled by an oppressive dictator.
* ''Literature/{{Spin}}'' presents an Earth that has become encased in a membrane by unknown forces and appears to be doomed to be destroyed within a few decades. Crime and violence are rampant, an oppressive right-wing regime has taken over the United States, much of the developing world is flirting with theocracy, and religious zealots are everywhere and have caused an epidemic of bovine disease to spread around the world thanks to their idiotic attempts to breed a pure-red calf. The ending subverts this trope, as it turns out that [[spoiler:not only has the membrane ensured Earth's survival, but the beings who created it have gifted humanity with a whole new planet to colonize.]]
* The eponymous planet Riesel in ''[[Literature/RieselTalesTwoHunters Riesel Tales: Two Hunters]]'' is covered in rusting, miles-high [[CityPlanet cityscape]], giant swaths of which have been outright abandoned; and it's all lorded over by a powerful [[TheMafia mafia]] faction. The air, thin as it is due to the [[StarScraper sheer altitude]] of the skyline (nobody lives on the deadly ground level), is heavily polluted from centuries of neglect. Just about every corner is crawling with [[WretchedHive crime]], ranging from petty thieves to violent psychopaths. Its population has more than its fair share of swindlers, gangsters, [[BountyHunter bounty hunters]], mercenaries and megalomaniacs; and the rest are comparatively nice people who are too poor to leave or are rich enough to live in the safer and more updated districts.
* In ''[[Literature/ThePowerOfFive Oblivion]]'', we get to see what the world looks like under the Old Ones. It's an endless string of natural disasters, wars, terrorist attacks, plagues, refugees, crazed despots, dystopian police states and, of course, the occasional EldritchAbomination attack.
* In the Literature/MoreauSeries, the Pan-Asian War left Tokyo and New Dehli radioactive craters, and the PRC conquered Japan and Taiwan. Tel Aviv was nuked by the Islamic Axis during the Third Gulf War, and sub-Saharan Africa and South America have been devastated by other, unnamed wars. [[UpliftedAnimal Moreaus]], created as soldiers, are second-class citizens at best throughout the world, and many are refugees from war or persecution. UsefulNotes/TheTroubles continue unabated in Northern Ireland. The U.S. verges on a PoliceState, with rampant political corruption as a bonus, and verges on civil war with the Moreau population. [[spoiler: and the alien invaders who caused much of this conspire behind the scenes to make it worse.]]

* In the eyes of many of its characters, London is this in ''Literature/TheRats'', even ''before'' the mutant killer rats come up out of the sewers.
* ''Literature/ClocksThatDontTick'' is set in a world ruled by immortal oligarchs known as the Bosses. They're not controlling or oppressive. On the contrary, it's their apathy that's responsible for the state of the world. With the elites immune to disease, cures ceased being developed. As a result, humanity is stricken by numberless deadly diseases, and most die before the age of thirty. Basic amenities such as heat or electric lighting is rare, as is food. The world's once great cities have been reduced to rusty wastelands. One can opt to become immortal and escape the filthiness of the outside world, but in doing so they become Thralls. That entails working sixteen-hour days for a debt that can never be paid off due to the astronomically high interest rate.
* In ''[[Literature/TheMazeRunner The Maze Runner Trilogy]]'', the world is crawling with those infected with the Flare and even those not infected have proven themselves to be just as nasty. Nearly everybody is willing to kill the protagonists (and everybody else) and there's nearly nothing in the way of plant life either.

* Ten years before the beginning of ''Literature/TheReckonersTrilogy'', humans began to spontaneously manifest superpowers. Unfortunately, use of these powers almost instantly transforms any Epic, no matter how moral they might have been before, into a total psychopath. Now, humanity is crushed and shattered, with the only surviving civilization being ruled by Epic warlords. Newcago is one of the nicest places around, simply because it has running water and electricity, although you could easily still be killed by an Epic at any time. The only heroes are the titular Reckoners, a secretive organization which hunts and kills Epics.
* London in ''Literature/TheGlimpse'', if you belong to the 25% of the population predisposed to mental illnesses. The "Pures" without that predisposition get the {{Crapsaccharine|World}} version in gated communities.
* In the ''Literature/DanielFaust'' series, God is missing or dead, angels are genocidal, and the only reason the world isn't in Hell's hands is because the various demonic courts are too busy feuding with each other to really focus on us. Humanity is a guppy in a very big ocean filled with very hungry sharks.
* ''Literature/{{Flatland}}''. Your social class is determined by how many sides you have, with autocratic Circle priests in charge. Irregulars are shunned by society and endure miserable, closely-monitored lives. [[StayInTheKitchen Women]], being line segments, are subject to many restrictive laws (announce their presence everywhere they go, use special doors) in order to prevent them from accidentally impaling someone. Painting and even ''use of colour'' have been outlawed and suppressed, and only shapes with a pedigree can marry. The lower classes' only hope is that their children are born with extra sides, so they will get a better chance at life. Additionally, every thousand years, when a sphere arrives to preach the Gospel of Three Dimensions, [[HeKnowsTooMuch the Circles execute or imprison anyone who follows its word.]]
* Discussed early in Creator/GregEgan's ''Literature/{{Orthogonal}}'' trilogy by [[spoiler: Nino]], who quotes an earlier offscreen conversation with an opponent of the GenerationShip project.
-->'''[[spoiler: Nino]]:''' He said that if the [[ItMakesSenseInContext mountain crashed into the ground]], it would be a mercy. He said the whole idea of a city in the void was insane. One by one, things would go wrong -- things that couldn't be fixed without help from outside. Within a generation you'd all be starving. Eating the soil. Begging for death.
* The city of Parole from ''Literature/ChameleonMoon'', populated by superheroes, watched at all times by the Eye in the Sky, and slowly falling into a river of fire.

* Life under the rule of her stepmother is terrible, but arguably only gets worse after Snow White leaves the house in ''Literature/SixGunSnowWhite'', because now she has to face being biracial and a woman in a white man's world. Even when she finds the best haven she's going to find in Oh-Be-Joyful, Witch Hex tells her that "What's east is hungry. What's west is hard."

* The world of ''Literature/TheNightLand'' and ''Literature/AwakeInTheNightLand'' is plunged in eternal darkness after the Sun gone out, and it has Lovecraftian monsters lurking in the darkness.
* In ''Literature/{{Citadel}}'', the central part of the US is a gang ruled war-zone, a significant part of the Upper Hemisphere was frozen solid, the entirety of Europe is under the complete mental control of Tyrant, and the Citadel itself admits to striving more towards brutal efficiency than actual justice.

* In ''Literature/ShatteredTwilight'', to the point that a widow's child being kidnapped by demons is almost ''ignored'' by the priesthood on the basis that it happens all the time and they have more important things to do.
* The world of the European Administration in ''Literature/TheAdministrationSeries'' is this. Overlaps with CrapsaccharineWorld.
** On one hand, the society Administration has no racism, sexism or homophobia, safe and non-addictive drugs are sold by the government and every citizen has government-provided contraceptives implanted.
** On the other hand, even ''talking'' ill of the government within earshot of anyone working for the various security agencies can get you arrested and interrogated i.e. tortured, there is institutionalized classism, with "corporates" able to get away with almost anything, and sabotage in the corporate world can be ''fatal''.
** Played straight with the future America- a Christian theocracy.
* ''Literature/TalesOfTheSpaceSouth'' takes place in the badly impoverished planet-city Space Alabama, a hellhole ruled by a racist aristocracy, with Lord George "Fore-man Grill" Birmingham, a disgusting {{Jerkass}}, at the helm.
* Mars in Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs' ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'', as well as its comic book adaptation ''ComicBook/WarlordOfMars'' is stated to be a dying word whose oceans dried up thousands of years ago due to a ecological catastrophe. The planet is an arid, extremely dangerous place, most of its fauna is hostile and carnivorous. Hordes of [[TheUsualAdversaries Green Martians]] [[RapePillageAndBurn roam the land raiding the weak]], while the last civilized peoples live in the city-states where [[DeadlyDecadentCourt Deadly Decadent Courts]] and [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] are depressingly common place with princesses and noblewomen being [[DamselInDistress regularly targeted for kidnapping]]. Resources are scarce. To keep their populations under control, the Martians developed a culture that causes them to exist in a constant state of perpetual warfare, consider assassination and kidnapping to be respectable and honorable professions, and fight duels at the drop of a hat. The predominant religion is a PathOfInspiration created by a society of cannibals that lures their unsuspecting victims in search of paradise to their domain in order to enslave and devour them. Said cannibals are also victims themselves of another PathOfInspiration created by others that feed on ''them'' and this cycle has been perpetrated for eras and nobody that returned alive was able to warn the world about it, being executed for heresy. To top it all off, the atmosphere is decaying and the one thing keeping all life on the planet from suffocating is a complex factory built by the {{Precursors}} that few people understand how it works. On the flip side, technology is so advanced that Martians are [[TheAgeless functionally immortal]] and can live for thousands of years, [[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou that is if they can get that far]].
* ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'': A war caused by a disastrous attempt to correct human genes that [[GoneHorriblyWrong went wrong]] claimed half of the US population and turned most of the environment into rough, uninhabitable wasteland. The entire human race is now sorted according to whether [[FantasticRacism they are genetically pure or damaged]], and being sorted into the latter is...not nice. This predictably resulted in violence that erupted in the metropolitan areas, which are practically the only places where people live. The United States is now [[FallenStatesOfAmerica a shadow of itself]], agreeing to a plan by a certain Bureau which necessitated an entire city, uhm, ''cities'', to be transformed into giant experimental bottles with the intention to produce more pure people. That goal is not noble by itself, but then the Bureau isolated them for eight generations and counting, which resulted in the people inside to forget why they live there and actually ''flipped'' the racism upside down, so that now the genetically pure (or as they call, Divergents) are persecuted, ensuring that the experiment will go on for a while.
* ''Literature/SnowCrash'' presents a future USA which has broken up into a loose collection of autonomous corporate city-states guided by anarchist-capitalist principles. Just to give you an idea of what this means, TheMafia runs ''a pizza delivery company'', and they take it ''very'' seriously: if a pizza is half an hour late, the boss himself will personally visit to your house and apologise and offer you a guarantee that the delivery boy responsible will be wearing CementShoes the same evening.
* ''Literature/CthulhuArmageddon'' is a post-apocalypse WeirdWest set AfterTheEnd when the Great Old Ones have destroyed the world. If the fact it was filled with monsters, demons, and a slowly-dying humanity wasn't enough--humanity is composed of a bunch of dicks too. Just about everyone is willing to betray anyone and the only people with any loyalty to one another are the insane cultists.
* ''Literature/IDidNOTGiveThatSpiderSuperhumanIntelligence'': The story acts as a prequel to ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsImASupervillain''. LA has some dark parts by the time of ''Supervillain'', but this book shows that it used to be ''so much'' worse. A MadScientist is kidnapping people off the street, the hero and villain with the most professional reputations have started a blood feud, and the police have been forbidden from interfering because it's just too dangerous. It's to the point that when Spider introduces a plan that involves feeding the worst members of the community to [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Mourning Dove]] and [[GirlWithPsychoWeapon Psychopomp]], everyone agrees.
* William Napier's ''Attila'' trilogy is set in the very last years of the Western Roman Empire. In the world of 450 AD, everything is crapsack. Both the Western and Eastern empires are ruled by weak hysterical lunatics. The Roman world is crumbling. The rich and powerful evade any sort of responsibility and refuse to contribute to trivial things such as maintaining proper defences and keeping the armies fully manned. Britannia has been abandoned to the barbarian Saxons. The collapsing Empire totters from one shock to the next. And then [[UsefulNotes/AttilaTheHun a barbarian warlord emerges in the East]] to unify the steppe tribes. The doomed hero Aetius gathers such Roman armies as he can, knowing it is all futile. But even he is shocked beyond despair by a prophecy that this is the last generation to know Imperial Rome and within twenty years there will be nothing but memories. What is already a Crapsack World will only get worse.
* Fyodor Berezin's ''Red Stars'' trilogy has World-2, a [[AlternateUniverse parallel universe]], where history diverges from ours during World War 2. Hitler delays Operation Barbarossa by a full month, allowing Stalin to deal the first blow. Germany falls to the Soviets in 2 years, followed by European countries "liberated" from Nazi oppression. Britain escapes conquest only because they had the foresight to scuttle the French Navy, preventing the Soviets from mounting a successful naval invasion (even though they managed to capture the Italian Navy). Stalin then institutes the policy of prolonging the Pacific War, thus keeping the US busy, by secretly helping Japan. Fast-forward to modern times: the USSR dominates the world, the US is the only remaining free power run by a military dictatorship, there are frequent clashes between the two powers, no space program exists, and tactical nukes are used without much thought. When the leaders of our world learn of World-2's existence, they are horrified at the possibility of the other world's people doing the same. [[spoiler:At the end of the second novel, the governments of the US and Russia launch hundreds of [=ICBMs=] at one another, then teleport those missiles to World-2, hoping to start a nuclear war there. The follow-up book indicates that they failed]]. Berezin seems to like working with this trope.
* The world of ''Literature/{{Atharon}}'' could be described this way. There are multiple states, but most of them have slavery inherent in the system one way or another, there are people with terrifying magical powers and equally dangerous magical creatures. Then there is the afterlife...
* The world of ''LightNovel/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'' is run by secret factions of summoners. In the setting, magic-users are InvisibleToNormals, making it difficult for normal people to even think of resisting. On top of that, any summoner can summon Materials, supernatural beings which are completely indestructible by non-magical means. Several years prior to the series' beginning, many high-ranking summoners died in an event known as the Secret War, and their loss broke the BalanceOfPower between the factions. As a result, internal discipline has been weakened, allowing many summoners to go rogue. Finally, [[spoiler:the White Queen, the ultimate Material who is worshipped as a goddess, [[GodIsEvil is an insane Eldritch Abomination who's responsible for all of this]]]].
* The world of ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'' is PostPeakOil, resulting in most of the population crowding into slums surrounding cities (where trailers are literally stacked on top of each other for space) for the slim hope of employment.The economy is extremely weak, and resources are scarce. On top of that, exploitative MegaCorp IOI maintains a virtual monopoly on many industries, and has enough influence that they can legally imprison and enslave debtors. Just about the only redeeming factor of this world is the virtual reality of the OASIS, and even that is under threat from IOI's attempts to win control of it via Halliday's contest.
* ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' starts off ''easy'' with a dystopian near-future setting where America is ravaged by terrorism, gutted by economic meltdowns, torn by ethnic strife and suffering almost totalitarian Federal tyranny, and the rest of the world is little better off. It gets ''[[ApocalypseHow much]]'' [[AfterTheEnd worse]] before long...
* A political system where every four years, the two least qualified assholes around gets nominated to try to fix a country that may well be beyond repair. A media that seems to have given up on actually taking the whole mess seriously and now just tries to capture the dim-witted viewing audience's attention with lowest-common-denominator spectacle. The halfway good people are the ones surest to suffer humiliation, hardship and quite probably dismemberment as well, and the idiots and crooks aren't much better off in the long run. Yeah, the world of ''Literature/TheCandidatesBasedOnATrueCountry'' is a ''very'' dark take on the real world...
* The world of Basawar in ''Literature/TheRifter'' is ruled by the Payshmura Church, a largely misogynistic, homophobic, and financially corrupt organization. The land itself is stripped of nutrients and the air depleted of oxygen due to the frequent opening of the Great Gate, which drains life from Basawar.
* Most of the Quirk Classics' LiteraryMashUps are set - or more accurately ''[[RecycledInSpace re-set]]'' - in exaggeratedly terrible worlds. By nature, most of this is played for comedy, with the original dialogue being used in deliberate contrast to the [[FunnyBackgroundEvent horrible events]] occurring around the characters.
** ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudiceAndZombies'' and its associated titles take place in a version of Regency England currently in the middle of a ZombieApocalypse; reportedly, Manchester has been completely overrun and even London isn't safe from the walking dead.
** ''Literature/SenseAndSensibilityAndSeaMonsters'' is set in a world where an event known as the Alteration has turned literally every form of marine life against humanity, transforming previously-harmless creatures like minnows into vicious killers and ushering in a host of mythical {{Sea Monster}}s. On top of that, [[HumansAreBastards human beings aren't so pleasant either]]: on top of the massive upsurge in piracy, mainstream society is extremely callous, with servants often being ignored while drowning or being torn apart, and apparently it's common practise to throw a child overboard to slow down any pursuing sea monsters. Even figures like Sir John Middleton and Mr Palmer have been [[AdaptationalVillainy re-imagined]] as [[EvilColonialist colonial slavers]] who have no qualms about robbing native cultures of their natural resources and kidnapping islander women to take as wives - in this case, the new Lady Middleton and Mrs Palmer. [[spoiler: And as if that wasn't bad enough, the story ends on the reveal that the novel is a CosmicHorrorStory and an EldritchAbomination is now loose in the ocean, ready to bring about the end of everything.]]
** ''Android Karenina'' actually begins in a CrapsaccharineWorld at first; however, as Alexei Karenin continues listening to [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul the Face's]] advice and begins gaining more political power, the few elements that mitigated the underlying unpleasantness are ultimately stripped away. By the end, the country has been reduced to a Dystopian parody of Tsarist Russia, with [[PuppetKing the Tsar]] firmly under the control of the [[AlienInvasion Honored Guests]], all advanced technology [[EnforcedTechnologyLevels confiscated from the populace]], a StateSec of super-powered robots assigned to enforce the new government, and the long-abandoned social class of Serfs being reinstated to replace robot workers.
* ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'': In this TieInNovel to Disney's ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans' home country, the Southern Isles, has been transformed into a PoliceState by his EvilOverlord [[TheCaligula father,]] who is a cruel dictator that routinely uses violence to solve problems he hates, including one incident where his response to a farmer's problem was to burn their farm and confiscate their livestock as DisproportionateRetribution, while in another case, Hans is sent down to beat up a peasant who insulted the king. Hans [[EveryoneHasStandards was also left unnerved]] when the king asked him for a report on how the tax revenue was [[DeadlyEuphemism "obtained"]] from a village that was behind on its taxes. For these reasons, Hans hated being the king's gofer, though he also knew that if he wanted to leave his home permanently without anybody knowing, he would have to be in his father's good graces in order to leave the Southern Isles.

* ''Literature/TheAccusation'', a short story anthology written by a real-life citizen of North Korea, is 247 pages of why North Korea is a real-life version of the above-mentioned [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Oceania]].
* The world of ''Franchise/EvilliousChronicles'' certainly qualifies, given all the tragedies that happen in a thousand year stretch. Each time period has a host of issues- from diseases that drive people [[TooDesperateToBePicky mad]] [[HungryMenace with]] [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty hunger]], to [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen tyrannical princesses]], to the destruction of entire nations overnight. Still special mention goes to the [[JustBeforeTheEnd world by Gallerian's era]], where the "rules" that govern the world are breaking down and there are zombies roaming around, parents giving birth to bizarre (sometimes tiger-shaped) babies, and people are getting infected with Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome and more strange things, all for no reason. And it seems every power in the world, from the Freezis Foundation (now Freezis Conglomerate) to the Evillious governments, are maliciously corrupt.
* Discussed in "Literature/AModelLife": Charlie offers the dissatisfied James a home in a different model, where he'd be a powerful law-enforcer in an apocalypse, with the complete authority to hurt or kill anyone. James finds the idea utterly horrifying.
* ''Literature/BringTheJubilee'' takes place in [[AlternateHistory a world where the South won the Civil War]]. The Confederacy is now a massive empire that's swallowed up most of the western hemisphere. While it's prosperous and immigrants are welcome, citizenship and voting rights only go to white men whose ancestors were citizens at the time of the CS' victory. People of color are, if anything, treated ''worse'' than they were in slavery. Things aren't much better in the United States, which has been reduced to a rump nation overrun with poverty and corruption. Jobs are difficult to come by, the only people with any opportunity are the wealthy and people who win the national lottery, and blacks are treated with hostility and blamed as the cause of the war.
* ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream''. Outside, the world is a scorched nuclear wasteland. Inside, in a world-filling complex, are the final five survivors. All of them are at the mercy of [[AIIsACrapshoot AM]], the godlike [=AI=] that destroyed the world. It utilizes its power to endlessly twist and torture them, from [[BodyHorror corrupting their bodies]] to sending them on impossible missions for food while keeping them on the brink of starvation. It's been doing this for the last 109 years and plans on doing it forever out of sheer, contemptuous hatred for humanity. ''And that's just the premise.''
* Tellos in ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror.'' Where to begin? The world is periodically wracked with apocalpytic, extinction-level [[TheNightThatNeverEnds Nights]] that see [[SuperPersistentPredator the Shade]] and mass famines [[DepopulationBomb wipe out most of the world's population]]; every man, woman, and child needs to [[WorldOfBadass vigorously train with weapons]] in preparation for when humanity is inevitably on its last legs again; Hamahra is under the toe of a brutal industrial elite with slums everywhere, the poor barely making enough money to sustain themselves as they're endlessly worked in the factories; the preceding governmental systems were an [[AristocratsAreEvil evil aristocracy]] and a [[CommieLand communist]] [[TheEmpire empire]]; warfare has grown so deadly and widespread that [[WarIsHell tens of millions were slaughtered]] over the course of the Dawn Empire; SkyPirates and HumanTraffickers make themselves rich off the suffering of people they rob, [[RapePillageAndBurn pillage]], [[MadeASlave enslave]], or [[IHaveYourWife blackmail]]; the only concerted effort to improve the world and end the Shade forever resulted in the creation of the aforementioned empire and countless deaths; the [[TheOrder Archknights]] are locked in a ForeverWar with the Shade and can barely find time to help the people who desperately need them, and when they actually do, there's so much rape and murder in the major cities that they can never hope to help all of the people who are being attacked and brutalized ''at that very minute.'' Tellos is an immutable Crapsack World that offers no escape from endless brutality and conflict, and the closest thing to TheChosenOne is a [[RetiredMonster reformed]] EvilOverlord who spends his time [[PayEvilUntoEvil viciously slaughtering the lesser monsters of the world]].

* Tellos in ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror.'' Where to begin? The world is periodically wracked with apocalpytic, extinction-level [[TheNightThatNeverEnds Nights]] that see [[SuperPersistentPredator the Shade]] and mass famines [[DepopulationBomb wipe out most of the world's population]]; every man, woman, and child needs to [[WorldOfBadass vigorously train with weapons]] in preparation for when humanity is inevitably on its last legs again; Hamahra is under the toe of a brutal industrial elite with slums everywhere, the poor barely making enough money to sustain themselves as they're endlessly worked in the factories and can be [[MadeASlave sold into slavery]] for nearly any crime; the preceding governmental systems were an [[AristocratsAreEvil evil aristocracy]] and a [[CommieLand communist]] [[TheEmpire empire]]; warfare has grown so deadly and widespread that [[WarIsHell tens of millions were slaughtered]] over the course of the Dawn Empire; SkyPirates and HumanTraffickers make themselves rich off the suffering of people they rob, [[RapePillageAndBurn pillage]], [[MadeASlave enslave]], or [[IHaveYourWife blackmail]]; the only concerted effort to improve the world and end the Shade forever resulted in the creation of the aforementioned empire and countless deaths; the [[TheOrder Archknights]] are locked in a ForeverWar with the Shade and can barely find time to help the people who desperately need them, and when they actually do, there's so much rape and murder in the major cities that they can never hope to help all of the people who are being attacked and brutalized ''at that very minute.'' Tellos is an immutable Crapsack World that offers no escape from endless brutality and conflict, and the closest thing to TheChosenOne is a [[RetiredMonster reformed]] EvilOverlord who spends his time [[PayEvilUntoEvil viciously slaughtering the lesser monsters of the world]].

** It really depends on the book and the author. The [[BittersweetEnding ending]] of ''Literature/OutboundFlight'' aside, Creator/TimothyZahn's novels, for example, tend to stay true to the original feel - there are dark times, but there is also joy and beauty and hope and adventure, and nothing is completely, unambiguously terrible. In some novels it's almost a [[WhiteAndGrayMorality white and gray]] contrast between the good guys and the bad guys, and the Empire is never some monolithic evil structure - it's made of people who are trying their hardest to do what they think is right.

** In ''Literature/{{Caliphate}}'', much of Continental Europe is under decay under Caliphate rule. The Middle East is a crapsack state as well, as noted by character Besma. The rest of the world isn't much better, with everyone pretty much in a state of hostility to one another that's effectively low-level war punctuated by periods of actual armed combat.

* Stephen King's ''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree'' presents an alternate history which diverges from ours with the survival of John F. Kennedy. The civil rights movement was never passed. The Vietnam war ended with a nuke being dropped on Hanoi, which precipitated other atomic conflicts around the world, including the destruction of Miami, meaning radiation poisoning is prevalent. [[DividedStatesOfAmerica Maine seceded from the U.S. and became a Canadian province.]] President Hilary Clinton is now trying to hold the remains of the country under Martial law. Gang warfare, pollution, poverty, extremism, famine, and hate are commonplace. [[FromBadToWorse The disruption of the timestream is also causing frequent, increasingly violent earthquakes all over the world, some of which are strong enough to sink whole islands.]] [[ArsonMurderandJaywalking And Paul McCartney is blind.]]

* Mars in Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs' ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'', as well as its comic book adaptation ''ComicBook/WarlordOfMars'' is stated to be a dying word whose oceans dried up thousands of years ago due to a ecological catastrophe. The planet is an arid, extremely dangerous place, most of its fauna is hostile and carnivorous. Hordes of [[TheUsualAdversaries Green Martians]] [[RapePillageAndBurn roam the land raiding the weak]], while the last civilized peoples live in the city-states where [[DeadlyDecadentCourt Deadly Decadent Courts]] and [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] are depressingly common place with [[EverythingIsBetterWithPrincesses princesses and noblewomen]] being [[DamselInDistress regularly targeted for kidnapping]]. Resources are scarce. To keep their populations under control, the Martians developed a culture that causes them to exist in a constant state of perpetual warfare, consider assassination and kidnapping to be respectable and honorable professions, and fight duels at the drop of a hat. The predominant religion is a PathOfInspiration created by a society of cannibals that lures their unsuspecting victims in search of paradise to their domain in order to enslave and devour them. Said cannibals are also victims themselves of another PathOfInspiration created by others that feed on ''them'' and this cycle has been perpetrated for eras and nobody that returned alive was able to warn the world about it, being executed for heresy. To top it all off, the atmosphere is decaying and the one thing keeping all life on the planet from suffocating is a complex factory built by the {{Precursors}} that few people understand how it works. On the flip side, technology is so advanced that Martians are [[TheAgeless functionally immortal]] and can live for thousands of years, [[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou that is if they can get that far]].

* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. Good or often merely neutral supernatural factions are outnumbered and outgunned by bad supernatural factions that are always chaotic evil and prey on humanity like cattle. Dark magic is hyper-addictive while few are even warned of this. Cosmic horrors lurk in the background, as well as the threats of sacrificial ascension rituals and old gods. The breaking of the masquerade being an effective "nuclear" option, the divisions between various evil factions, and the web of rules and alliances are the only reasons why the evil factions haven't simply taken over. However, the current villains appear to be systematically breaking from those rules, such as killing tens of thousands of people in a nerve gas attack.

* ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream''. Outside, the world is a scorched nuclear wasteland. Inside, in a world-filling complex, are the final five survivors. All of them are at the mercy of [[AIIsACrapshoot AM]], the godlike [=AI=] that destroyed the world. It utilizes its power to endlessly twist and torture them, from [[BodyHorror corrupting their bodies]] to sending them on impossible missions for food while keeping them on the brink of starvation. It's been doing this for the last 109 years and plans on doing it forever out of sheer, contemptuous hatred for humanity. ''And that's just the premise.''

* Somewhat subverted with ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'''s city of Ankh-Morpork. It has all the makings of a Crapsack World and yet, due to the brilliance of the Patrician and the sheer stubbornness of its inhabitants, it is the place where everyone on the Discworld wants to live and always bounces back from whatever crisis it faces. In ''Discworld/NightWatch'', however, you see just how ''bad'' the city can be without Vetinari.

* ''Literature/BringTheJubilee'' takes place in [[AlternateHistory a world where the South won the Civil War]]. The Confederacy is now a massive empire that's swallowed up most of the western hemisphere. While it's prosperous and immigrants are welcome, citizenship and voting rights only go to white men whose ancestors were citizens at the time of the CS' victory. People of color are, if anything, treated ''worse'' than they were in slavery. Things aren't much better in the United States, which has been reduced to a rump nation overrun with poverty and corruption. Jobs are difficult to come by, the only people with any opportunity are the wealthy and people who win the national lottery, and blacks are treated with hostility and blamed as the cause of the war.

* Discussed in "Literature/AModelLife": Charlie offers the dissatisfied James a home in a different model, where he'd be a powerful law-enforcer in an apocalypse, with the complete authority to hurt or kill anyone. James finds the idea utterly horrifying.

** The continent of Essos is no better: part of it is ''still'' a smoking, glowing ruin from a major volcanic catastrophe that wiped a thriving empire off the map over three hundred years ago and thus is [[ForbiddenZone completely uninhabitable]], unless you can bathe in lava and like sulphurous steam rooms. Other bits have such hopeful names as [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace "The Shadow Lands", "The Bone Mountains"]] and "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Slavers' Bay]]", others are rumored to be suffering the equivalent of low-level magical fallout and/or plague of some sort... and the rest? Is mainly a patchwork of city states and would-be empires that have all seen better days, all loosely linked by that aforementioned slave-trade economy focused around Slaver's Bay, all compounded by hordes of marauding semi-nomads living in the grasslands between the states having to be fended off by bribes or they'll attack. And, the less said about the continent of Sothoryos, the better: it was Ground Zero to something ''truly'' nasty enough to make the Doom of Valyria look like child's play. There are only some islands well off the coast and, maybe, two or three cities even ''vaguely'' inhabitable left. Very little is known of what happened, since trying to survive long enough to dig through and investigate that verdant, pestilence-ridden, red-in-tooth-and-claw hellscape is practically impossible for baseline humans.

* The world of ''Franchise/EvilliousChronicles'' certainly qualifies, given all the tragedies that happen in a thousand year stretch. Each time period has a host of issues- from diseases that drive people [[TooDesperateToBePicky mad]] [[HungryMenace with]] [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty hunger]], to [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen tyrannical princesses]], to the destruction of entire nations overnight. Still special mention goes to the [[JustBeforeTheEnd world by Gallerian's era]], where the "rules" that govern the world are breaking down and there are zombies roaming around, parents giving birth to bizarre (sometimes tiger-shaped) babies, and people are getting infected with Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome and more strange things, all for no reason. And it seems every power in the world, from the Freezis Foundation (now Freezis Conglomerate) to the Evillious governments, are maliciously corrupt.

* ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'': In this TieInNovel to Disney's ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans' home country, the Southern Isles, has been transformed into a PoliceState by his EvilOverlord [[TheCaligula father.]] Regime critics, criminals, and delinquent taxpayers are frequently subjected to unspecified but gruesome punishments, including forced disappearances, beatings, and torture. One incident even included the king ordering the army to burn down a farmer's barn to the ground and confiscate his livestock as DisproportionateRetribution for not providing enough crops to the government. In another scene, Hans [[EvenEvilHasStandards was visibly shaking]] when the king asked him for a report on how the tax revenue was [[DeadlyEuphemism "obtained"]] from a village that was behind on its taxes. Because of this, Hans secretly loathed being the king's gofer, though he also knew that if he wanted to escape his country ASAP without anybody knowing, he would have to be in his father's good graces in order to leave the Southern Isles for good. Part of the reason why Hans launches his putsch in Arendelle and is determined to rule it with fairness is because of the tyranny and abuse of power he saw in his father and brothers, who are cruel dictators that routinely use violence to solve problems they don't like. And being that his country is an unstable regime where people hate the king for his tyranny, it's implied Hans heard of rumors about a possible rebellion during his time as his father's assistant, but deliberately refused to tell the king.

* What do you think about living in ''Literature/{{The Passage}}'', where the majority of human population has been wiped out (possibly everyone outside North America, and mostly everyone in from North America), there are superhuman zombie-vampires who are far stronger than humans, too fast to aim at and you turn into one of them after being bitten in one of five cases - and are simply devoured in other four? Oh, and all of them are controlled by several Big Bads who are using most remaining humans as a cattle, and strong light is only effective defense you have?

* ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'': In this TieInNovel to Disney's ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans' home country, the Southern Isles, has been transformed into a PoliceState by his EvilOverlord [[TheCaligula father.]] Regime critics, criminals, and delinquent taxpayers are frequently subjected to unspecified but gruesome punishments, including forced disappearances, beatings, and torture. One incident even included the king ordering the army to burn down a farmer's barn to the ground and confiscate his livestock as DisproportionateRetribution for not providing enough crops to the government. In another scene, Hans [[EvenEvilHasStandards was visibly shaking]] when the king asked him for a report on how the tax revenue was [[DeadlyEuphemism "obtained"]] from a village that was behind on its taxes. Because of this, Hans secretly loathed being the king's gofer, though he also knew that if he wanted to escape his country ASAP without anybody knowing, he would have to be in his father's good graces in order to leave the Southern Isles for good. Part of the reason why Hans launches his putsch in Arendelle and is determined to rule a kingdom with stability and fairness is because of the tyranny and abuse of power he saw and despised in his father and brothers, who are despotic dictators that routinely use violence to solve problems they don't like. And being that his country is an unstable regime where people hate the king for his tyranny, Hans may have also heard of grumblings about a possible rebellion during his three-year stint as his father's assistant but deliberately chose not to tell the king about this.

* The world of ''Franchise/EvilliousChronicles'' certainly qualifies, given all the tragedies that happen in a thousand year stretch. Each time period has a host of issues- from diseases that drive people [[HorrorHunger mad with hunger]], to [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen tyrannical princesses]], to the destruction of entire nations overnight. Still special mention goes to the [[JustBeforeTheEnd world by Gallerian's era]], where the "rules" that govern the world are breaking down and there are zombies roaming around, parents giving birth to bizarre (sometimes tiger-shaped) babies, and people are getting infected with Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome and more strange things, all for no reason. And it seems every power in the world, from the Freezis Foundation (now Freezis Conglomerate) to the Evillious governments, are maliciously corrupt.

* ''Literature/TheAccusation'', a short story anthology written by a real-life citizen of North Korea, is 247 pages of why North Korea is a real-life version of the above-mentioned [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Oceania]].

** The continent of Essos is no better: part of it is ''still'' a smoking, glowing ruin from a major volcanic catastrophe that wiped a thriving empire off the map over three hundred years ago and thus is [[ForbiddenZone completely uninhabitable]], unless you can bathe in lava and like sulphurous steam rooms. Other bits have such hopeful names as [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace "The Shadow Lands", "The Bone Mountains"]] and "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Slavers' Bay]]", others are rumored to be suffering the equivalent of low-level magical fallout and/or plague of some sort... and the rest? Is mainly a patchwork of city states and would-be empires that have all seen better days, all loosely linked by that aforementioned slave-trade economy focused around Slaver's Bay, all compounded by hordes of marauding semi-nomads living in the grasslands between the states having to be fended off by bribes or they'll attack. And, the less said about the continent of Sothoryos, the better: it was Ground Zero to something ''truly'' nasty enough to make the Doom of Valyria look like child's play. There are only some islands well off the coast and, maybe, two or three cities even ''vaguely'' inhabitable left. Very little is known of what happened.