36 Bureaucracy in fiction

The Aerial Board of Control is a fictional supranational organization to manage air traffic for the whole world. It was described in the early science fiction stories of Rudyard Kipling, "With The Night Mail" and "As Easy as ABC". The organisation was able to limit the influence of national states and create a de facto world government.

American War is the first novel by Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in a near-future United States of America, ravaged by climate change and disease, in which a second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels.

Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published on May 14, 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. A television miniseries, starring and produced by Lupita Nyong'o, was in development for HBO Max.

"The Army of a Dream" is a speculative fiction short story written by Rudyard Kipling, published in the Morning Post in June 1904. In it Kipling puts forward various methods for reforming the British Army of the period.

Barchester Towers is a novel by English author Anthony Trollope published by Longmans in 1857. It is the second book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, preceded by The Warden and followed by Doctor Thorne. Among other things it satirises the antipathy in the Church of England between High Church and Evangelical adherents. Trollope began writing this book in 1855. He wrote constantly and made himself a writing-desk so he could continue writing while travelling by train. "Pray know that when a man begins writing a book he never gives over", he wrote in a letter during this period. "The evil with which he is beset is as inveterate as drinking – as exciting as gambling".

The Castle is a 1926 novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist known only as "K." arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Count Westwest. Kafka died before he could finish the work, but suggested it would end with K. dying in the village, the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there." Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle-class of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence, it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form.

English, August: An Indian Story is a novel by Indian author Upamanyu Chatterjee written in English, first published in 1988. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1994. The novel portrays the struggle of a civil servant who is posted in a rural area and is considered to be a very authentic portrayal of the state of Indian youth in the 1980s.

Along with the employees of Planet Express, Futurama includes a large array of characters, which include co-workers, media personalities, business owners, extended relatives, townspeople, aliens, and villains. Many of these characters were created for one-time gags, background scenes or other functions in the Futurama universe. A number of them have gained expanded roles and subsequently starred in their own episodes. Other characters started out as background characters, and have been used to personify new roles later on in the series.

The Little Golden Calf is a satirical novel by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, published in 1931. Its main character, Ostap Bender, also appears in a previous novel by the authors called The Twelve Chairs. The title alludes to the "golden calf" of the Bible.

Good Guys is an urban fantasy novel by the American writer Steven Brust published in 2018. It is about a fictional society in which magic exists, unknown to most people.

The Good Soldier Švejk is an unfinished satirical dark comedy novel by Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, published in 1921–1923, about a good-humored, simple-minded middle-aged man who pretends to be enthusiastic to serve Austria-Hungary in World War I.

The Government Inspector, also known as The Inspector General, is a satirical play by Russian-Ukrainian dramatist and novelist, Nikolai Gogol. Originally published in 1836, the play was revised for an 1842 edition. Based upon an anecdote allegedly recounted to Gogol by Pushkin, the play is a comedy of errors, satirizing human greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the first of six books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction "hexalogy" by Douglas Adams. The novel is an adaptation of the first four parts of Adams's radio series of the same name. The novel was first published in London on 12 October 1979. It sold 250,000 copies in the first three months.

The Hole We're In is a 2010 novel by Gabrielle Zevin about a family who are caught in a complex bureaucratic tangle when a credit card company sends New Yorker Vincent Pomeroy bills for a man of the same name who lives in Texas. When Pomeroy insisted he did not incur the charges for the Texan man, the company informs him that their policy requires him to take the other Vincent Pomeroy to court and get a judgement of identity theft. Without an external court judgement, the company has no procedure for eliminating these types of charges. However, the company did have a procedure for having the Texan man's bills sent to the New York address for him to make regular payments.

Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absence, ready to begin his life anew.

MaddAddam is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, published on 29 August 2013.

The Memorandum is an English translation of the 1965 play Vyrozumění, by Czech playwright Václav Havel. Englishwoman Vera Blackwell first published this translation in 1967. In 2006, Canadian translator Paul Wilson published a new translation, titled The Memo at Havel's request.

The Mezzanine (1988) is the first novel by American writer Nicholson Baker. It narrates what goes through a man's mind during a modern lunch break.

The Ministry of Magic is the government of the Magical community of Britain in J. K. Rowling's Wizarding World, headed by an official entitled the Minister for Magic. The magical government in Britain is first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; the Ministry makes its first proper appearance in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003). Throughout the books, it is regularly depicted as corrupt, elitist and completely incompetent, with its high-ranking officials blind to ominous events and unwilling to take action against threats to wizard society. Dolores Umbridge was placed at Hogwarts to see what was going on at the school and prevent the news that Voldemort was back from spreading. It reaches a zenith of corruption before being effectively taken over by Lord Voldemort. At the end of the final book, following Voldemort's death, Kingsley Shacklebolt takes over the ministry, changing it for the better. By the time of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hermione Granger is the Minister for Magic.

"The Ministry of Silly Walks" is a sketch from the Monty Python comedy troupe's television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, series 2, episode 1, which is entitled "Face the Press". The episode first aired on 15 September 1970. A shortened version of the sketch was performed for Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

Oryx and Crake is a 2003 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and adventure romance, rather than pure science fiction, because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do", yet goes beyond the amount of realism she associates with the novel form. It focuses on a lone character called Snowman, who finds himself in a bleak situation with only creatures called Crakers to keep him company. The reader learns of his past, as a boy called Jimmy, and of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering that occurred under the purview of Jimmy's peer, Glenn "Crake".

The Pale King is an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace, published posthumously on April 15, 2011. It was planned as Wallace's third novel, and the first since Infinite Jest in 1996, but it was not completed at the time of his death. Before his suicide in 2008, Wallace organized the manuscript and associated computer files in a place where they would be found by his widow, Karen Green, and his agent, Bonnie Nadell. That material was compiled by his friend and editor Michael Pietsch into the form that was eventually published. Wallace had been working on the novel for over a decade. Even incomplete, The Pale King is a long work, with 50 chapters of varying length totaling over 500 pages.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is a science fantasy novel by American writers Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. It was published in 2017.

Rivers of London is the first novel in the series of the same name by English author Ben Aaronovitch. The novel was released on 10 January 2011 through Gollancz and was well received by critics, earning a Galaxy National Book Awards nomination for Aaronovitch in the New Writer of the Year award.

Scenes from the Past, first published in English as The Trilogy of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin, is a trilogy of plays by Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin. The first play, Krechinsky's Wedding was written in 1854 during Sukhovo-Kobylin's imprisonment, premiered in 1855 and published in Sovremennik magazine in 1856. The second play, The Trial was written in 1858 an premiered only in 1881, as hadn't passed the censorship. The last play of the trilogy, Tarelkin's Death was written in 1869 and premiered only in 1900.

The Screwtape Letters is a Christian apologetic novel by C. S. Lewis and dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien. It is written in a satirical, epistolary style and while it is fictional in format, the plot and characters are used to address Christian theological issues, primarily those to do with temptation and resistance to it.

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron is a dystopian novel, the first in the Shades of Grey series by novelist Jasper Fforde. The story takes place in Chromatacia, an alternative version of the United Kingdom wherein social class is determined by one's ability to perceive colour.

Something Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel. Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche.

SS-GB is an alternative history novel by Len Deighton, set in a United Kingdom conquered and occupied by Germany during the Second World War. The novel's title refers to the branch of the Nazi SS that controls Britain. It was first published in 1978.

The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending.

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix is a 1976 Belgian/French animated feature film based on the Asterix comic book series. René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, the creators of the series, wrote the story and directed the film themselves; with co-direction by Pierre Watrin and the screenplay co-written by Pierre Tchernia, a friend of Goscinny and Uderzo. The film was directed, produced and animated at Goscinny and Uderzo's own animation studio, Studios Idéfix and is the only Asterix animated film that has used the Xerography Process. At the time of its release, the film received mixed reviews since its tone is more cartoony and frequently breaks the fourth wall. Nowadays its reception is more favorable, with it often being cited as one of the best Astérix films, even reaching the status of a cult classic.

The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route. Vogons are slug-like but vaguely humanoid, are bulkier than humans, and have green skin. Vogons are described as "one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous", and having "as much sex appeal as a road accident" as well as being the authors of "the third worst poetry in the universe". They are employed as the galactic government's bureaucrats. According to Marvin the Paranoid Android, they are also the worst marksmen in the galaxy.

Woman on the Edge of Time is a 1976 novel by Marge Piercy. It is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. The novel was originally published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Yes Minister is a British political satire sitcom written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. Comprising three seven-episode series, it was first transmitted on BBC2 from 1980 to 1984. A sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, ran for 16 episodes from 1986 to 1988. All but one of the episodes lasted half an hour, and almost all ended with a variation of the title of the series spoken as the answer to a question posed by Minister Jim Hacker. Several episodes were adapted for BBC Radio; the series also spawned a 2010 stage play that led to a new television series on Gold in 2013.