reading

Which book’s ending would I rewrite if I could?

1984.

So I did rewrite it.

Let me back up.

“If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?”

This was WordPress’s Daily Writing Prompt today, July 27, 2026. When I saw it, it felt surreal, almost dreamlike. Because I literally just finished writing the last book in a trilogy that was inspired by a couple things:

ICE in Minnesota.

And the ending of 1984.

Worst Book Ending Ever

The MC in 1984 ends the book by saying he loves Big Brother? Seriously? No!

No, no, no!

Controversial, maybe, but… I’d kind of like to see dystopian satire books about authoritarianism and fascism and control and automated surveillance and all that stuff that nobody wants but just seems to be coming at us anyway (Your car gets to decide if you can drive? Seriously?) end with, oh, I don’t know… something better.

Hope, for starters.

A new, egalitarian way of living that treats everyone with respect and dignity would be amazing.

A glimpse of how we might get ourselves out of this mess—without resorting to the typical dystopian way of resolving things that I find so disheartening.

So I wrote it.

A third thing that inspired me

When Jimmy Kimmel was suspended, I read a post somewhere, written to Disney, that said something like, “Didn’t you watch Andor? It’s your own show!”

I haven’t seen Andor, but from what I can tell, it’s a high-fantasy type story. And it occurred to me that maybe, for some people, when a show’s world is too far removed from the real world, the themes don’t always hit home as strongly as they could.

So, I decided to write a dystopian trilogy that stuck to the real world—today’s real world—as much as possible.

What do you call dystopian fiction that’s partially ripped from the headlines?

Near-Future Collapse Fiction?

It took me three books, not one, to move the “High States,” a fictional country that looks a lot like the 2026 United States, from a growing fascist government into something better—to see if it was even possible—but I did eventually get the characters there.

It is possible.

And the last book shows how they do it.

Hopeful Apocalyptic Fiction?

Now if only the world could move in that direction, or something like it, without first having to suffer and learn the hard way that it didn’t have to be this way.

Megan Bledsoe writes stories with a touch of fantasy across three distinct emotional tracks: dark, light, and gray. Her next release is The Epoch Rite of Passage, a dystopian satire trilogy for readers who wish 1984 could have ended another way. Read the first scene here.

Optimistic Dystopian Fiction