When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?
—Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Dystopian fiction in its strictest sense goes back to at least the 18th century, when society began to change fairly rapidly: developing technologies, changing cultures, new social mores. But the seed of it goes back to mythology; as soon as anyone could imagine a future, they were imagining the world coming to an end. Sometimes there's an apocalypse lurking in a dystopia's past or future; sometimes it's just plain old capitalism. However which way a dystopia rises in a story, it's a reflection of the society that produced its author. So long as we're not seeing active societal collapse in a more traditional post-apocalyptic story, it goes here. Expect a lot of cyberpunk.
[Note: this list is pretty sparse right now, but expect it to grow.]
Akira
Blade Runner
Shadowrun
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