Jon Armstrong, author of Grey (Nightshade, $14.95)

Paolo Bacigalupi, author of The Windup Girl (Nightshade, $14.95)

and Scott Westerfeld, author of Leviathan (Simon and Schuster, $19.99)

Dystopia has been a popular genre since before the word existed. There is little more powerful or indeed more darkly gleeful object of imagination than a ruined corrupted vision of the world as we know it. If the form has seen something of a resurgence in popularity recently, it's only the possibilities for dissolution inherent in our own lives that are to blame. Well, that and these three authors.

Jon Armstrong's debut novel Grey gives us a brutal, often hilarious future too easily recognizeable to those of us living in chic downtown Manhattan. His America is fractured into vastly wealthy cliques, defining themselves by their allegiance to different fashion magazines. Their decadence, naturally, is built on the back of a viciously poor and despoiled lower class. This was one of our favorite SF books of 2007, and rumor has it that we can expect a sequel later this year. If we plead hard enough maybe we can get Jon to give us an advance listen.

Paolo Bacigalupi is another store favorite and another author whose fiction, often set in blasted post-ecological-collapse landscapes, features tough lessons sculpted around kick-ass stories of intrigue. Pump-Six, his collection of short work, earned him a handful of awards, but this past year it was his novel The Windup Girl that really brought him wider attention, both in Science Fiction circles and out. It's just earned him the Locus First Novel Award, and been shortlisted for the Nebula and the Hugo. Time magazine chose it as one of the best novels (that's right, not genre novels but novels, period) of 2009. What's more, booksellers around the country have been raving about it. Paolo will be giving us a look at his calorie-counting society, where the tech is decadent and the solutions few.

Lastly, but perhaps best known, we have Scott Westerfeld. Scott began his career writing edgy cyberpunk inflected novels in the nineties, which won him broad acclaim but many of which, as happens too frequently in Science Fiction even to new classics like these, are out of print. In this century, however, Scott has found huge success writing bestselling tales of, you guessed it, technology-backed social stratification, but this time targeted at teen readers. The books are funny, terrifying, bubbly and insightful, and paint a better roadmap for youthful independence and revolution than Heinlein ever did. They include Westerfeld's four-book Uglies series, his Midnighters series, Peeps, and most recently his fast-paced alt-history steampunk adventure Leviathan.

All three authors will be here to read, sign books and discuss their work. If you're a fan of the Orwellian or just like a good tale, this is an evening not to be missed.