IGN has an interesting article on the 'The Influence of Literature and Myth in Videogames' which includes a section with Ken Levine and the various influences on BioShock.

"With BioShock, I wanted to build a world where [things] would happen and be believable and not in the far future, but something that we could speak to, like something we're dealing with now -- with stem cell research and the moral issues that go around," said Levine in a phone conversation with IGN. "And I have my useless liberal arts degree, so I've read stuff from Ayn Rand and [George] Orwell, and all the sort of utopian and dystopian writings of the 20th century, which I've found really fascinating. There was a great period in the middle of the last century where there were a lot of people, Huxley, Orwell, and Rand, writing about utopias and distopias."