Dystopian fiction always has fascinated me because writers such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury based their stories on real-world trends—and simply took them to logical extremes. Storylines involving, say, departments of pre-crime that arrested people based on algorithms seemed preposterous, but have turned out to be creepily close to the mark.
It's hard to underestimate the absurdity of government directives and bureaucrats, so these tales—however chilling—often are quite funny. My favorite dystopian hero is Robert De Niro's character, Archibald "Harry" Tuttle, in the movie Brazil. He was the government's main enemy—a "villain" who fixed HVAC systems without a permit from Central Services.
