I've never read 1984. Should I?

See, you’ve interpreted my point in an unsubtle way

I’ve applied the same approach as you’ve employed.

And that the book is not sci-fi i.e. it’s not about intrusive technology it’s about totalitarianism in general

You’re making absolutist statements based on your subjective experience of reading the book. Be prapared for others to disagree with you.

Intersting that you read the situation in which the book is set, as a vision of a Stalinist totalitarian state, yet seemingly choose to omit the referrences to Nazism; particularly the use of the image of ‘Goldstein’ by the state, which is a direct referrence to how such states and agencies use a mythical notion of ‘others’ to instill fear and hate within subjects.

Winston’s diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of
Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face,
with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard–a
clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile
silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles
was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a
sheep-like quality.

although a graphic novel so ignored by many, this also seems to be a vision of future which tallies worryingly with 1984 and the way we are heading. Particularity with the make the people so fearful of something they surrender their choice to the government. I mean it’s not like anti-terrorism can be used to erode civil liberties or that we could be led into war for mythical weapons of mass destruction now is it?

1984 is very definitely sci-fi!

Why do you say that?

You’re making absolutist statements based on your subjective experience of reading the book.

I didn’t think I was – what did you think was absolutist?

1984 is very definitely sci-fi!
Why do you say that?

1) It’s fiction
2) It’s set in the future
3) Things like the telescreens

Why do you claim it isn’t?

Science fiction, to me, is a story *about* the science or technology, not just something futuristic that has technology in it.

So Bladerunner yes, Star Wars no.

In 1984 they manipulate the people for. The fact that it’s done with telescreens isn’t important – it has happened for real before that stuff was invented.

If you can point to ONE incidence of someone being disappeared by the authorities for being anti regime, I’ll concede a point.

Various hundreds of people disappeared to Guantanamo, and many other resort locations whose names we don’t even remember?

And most people don’t give a sht, because their minds are full of One Direction and other manufactured entertainment. Much like the proles, in fact ….

So Bladerunner yes

Swerving wildly off-topic – do you think Bladerunner is about technology? I think it’s about a man in love, and what it means to be in love, set against a futuristic noir background.

Well, it’s been a while since I watched it and I don’t think I was paying much attention but isn’t it about the sentient human-like “robots” and the implications of that?

Well, for me it was about a human’s reaction to that environment. But anyway, it was not to say who is right or wrong, just that the film can be legitimately seen in different ways.

Stars Wars isn’t Sci Fi?

Clearly you missed all the space ships an’ lasers an’ aliens an’ shit, huh? 🙂

Yes of course. And a lot of stories are essentially the same but with different contexts – hence the ‘7 plots’ idea.

Blade runner is film noir.

From femme fatale to first person narration to the cinematography, to the questionable moral outlooks of all the protagonists

Stars Wars isn’t Sci Fi?

Most definitely not!

it’s been a week since the OP, have you put your hands on a copy?

I disagree with you, but I understand what you mean. For you it’s Hard Sci Fi or nothing, so if its about science ( proper debatable, usable science) then it’s Sci Fi, soft Sci Fi ( where spaceships are ‘just’ FLT as a plot device) just happen in context of the novel or film, and could be anything.

Right?

Swerving wildly off-topic – do you think Bladerunner is about technology? I think it’s about a man in love, and what it means to be in love, set against a futuristic noir background.

Bladerunner is Frankenstein in the future. It and the book it’s based on (Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?) is about what responsibility we have to our creations when our creations become self aware, sentient and emotional. Do we just switch them off because we don’t like then even though what we’ve done is teach them to think for themselves. For most sentient beings, the ultimate goal is self-preservation, so when we create sentient beings can we really complain when they do what sentient beings – preserve themselves? To me that’s what top science fiction is about, creating the environment to ask questions about ourselves. Like if we have the technology to create a truly totalitarian state should we?

molgrips – Member

Stars Wars isn’t Sci Fi?

Most definitely not!
I like you molgrips, you’re funny – do you do children’s parties?
Are you tying to claim that having previously been told in other times and places neither A Fistful of Dollars or The Magnificent Seven are actually westerns?

Yeah I suppose so. If the science plays a part in the plot, then I guess I consider it scifi. In Star Wars, the planets could be countries, the Death Star could be a big army or something, and it’d be clearly a fantasty story no arguments.

1984, if you read it along with Animal Farm, struck me as a warnings against the dangers of totalitarianism of whatever political hue.

It’s the logical conclusion of Orwell’s journey from idealism > disillusionment with socialism/communism, which he chronicles in Homage to Catalonia – he goes out to fight against fascism but comes home having concluded that the communists on “his” side were just as much a shower of bastards as their opponents.

In 1948 when it was written, the threat of living under a totalitarian state would have seemed very real. Nazism had just been defeated but Stalinist Communism was probably not entirely discredited as a political idea and it was well worth Orwell’s while to dissuade left-leaning people of its merits.

It stands comparison with fictionalised accounts of life under totalitarian regimes that were written around the same time, such as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon and Hans Fallada’s Alone In Berlin. Anthony Burgess’ 1985 is an amusing deconstruction of 1984 which shows how rooted it was in the austere and exhausted postwar period when it was written – e.g. Room 101 and the interiors of the various “ministries” being inspired by Orwell’s work for the BBC at the time.

Its apparent prescience with regard to the present day is almost accidental, and as much a result of so much of the language of the book being absorbed (often erroneously) into mainstream language.

edhornby – Member
it’s been a week since the OP, have you put your hands on a copy?

Yes I read it. I chose not to post anymore becuase everyone else has spoken for me vs Molgrips. But I am agreeing with the generalisations and also interested in some of the variations of opinion.

My comparison of Goldstien to Bin Laden was no mistake – as someone else pointed out, this could be him, Hitler, Hussien, Gaddafi etc by the symbology and meaning of the fixation to the public of an arch enemy is the same.

It’s the logical conclusion of Orwell’s journey from idealism > disillusionment with socialism/communism,

This!

Hence my recommendation on page one to read the works chronologically so as to understand his journey and how the ideas formed.

Its easily forgotten that one of the sub-plots of ’84 was that you never know whether the perpetual state of war was merely a masquerade to justify to the people the constant shortages of day to day items.

Also one to throw out there in dystopian concepts is Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (needless to say I’m talking about the book, not the travesty they called a film)

I haven’t read the book but I rate the film very highly.. after someone pointed out the now very obvious ‘twist’. Remarkable in fact that it’s so blatantly obvious but our Hollywood conditioning seems to hide it in plain view.

Eh? Whats the twist?

I often wonder how you guys see these things, but I took the film as a laddish shoot em up. Now, prompted by ninfan’s post my brain is in overdrive and I wiki’d the book/storyline – even the film uses military uniforms based on the WW2 German uniform and therefore leading the way to promotion of fascism? The blatant destruction of and belief in superiority of the Bugs intended to also portray the same / racial extermination/overtones?

I can’t work out whether I’m too thick to see these things, or people are reading much too much into what people write down for the sake of critical comment.

Nah, the book is much more introspective about the nature of democracy, society and personal liberty – the filum is just garbage as, other than the short bit in school, it completely glosses over/misses the analysis.

Also one to throw out there in dystopian concepts is Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (needless to say I’m talking about the book, not the travesty they called a film)

Heresy! It’s a great film, as long as you take it as a black comedy and don’t worry too much about the book.

The twist is that the humans are the baddies. If you watch it with that in mind, it’s glaringly obvious – Nazi uniforms, the imperial eagle, even the SS are there.

It may not be the same as the book but that doesn’t stop it standing alone as a film.

Starship troopers is a dark dark book. well worth the read.

So, the reading list so far, from this thread:

Down and Out in Paris and London
Something by Noam Chomsky
Starship Troopers

What else?

Animal Farm

and not from the thread so far but probably relevant
Lord Of The Flies

Read both of those. Both fantastic, and both very relevant every day. More so than 1984, I reckon, because they are about basic human nature.

What else?

Wigan Pier or Priestleys ‘English Journey’

Modern:

Talebs ‘Black Swan’

for those with an interest in policing:

James Patrick’s ‘The Rest is Silence’

military buffs:

Seelowe Nord: Andy Johnson
Chieftians: Bob Forrest Webb
A Measure of Danger: Memoirs of war journalist Michael Nicholson

Brave New World is the obvious choice if you haven’t read it yet.

But if we’re going for SF-dystopian-future type novels:

The Drowned World
Riddley Walker
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Day of the Triffids

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, the best book I’ve ever read about the political and the personal and how they cannot be seperated

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Generally thought to be a major influence on both Brave New World and 1984. And a really good read.

Necessary Illusions or Manufacturing Consent are the two most well known starting points for Noam Chomsky

Brave New World was good, but suffered from being so seminal of course. By which I mean its ideas have been reused so often in the last 80 years that we think of them as part of the landscape now.

*searches for starship troopers on kindle* Bugger, not there.

The legend that is David Icke on the connection between Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFJrIljTb0A

So, the reading list so far, from this thread:

Down and Out in Paris and London
Something by Noam Chomsky
Starship Troopers

What else?

Keep the Aspidistra Flying – this is a great book, possibly my favourite of Orwell’s novels. Blackly comic. It’s a precursor to the theme he takes to a terrifying conclusion in 1984 – the impossibility of retaining individual liberty in the face of societal pressure.

Alone In Berlin – the German title for this is “Every Man Dies Alone” – spookily close to Orwell’s projected title for 1984 – The Last Man In Europe. All the more chilling for being set in the actual past as opposed to an imagined future. Ditto, Darkness At Noon – set during Stalin’s show trials.

So, the reading list so far, from this thread:

Down and Out in Paris and London
Something by Noam Chomsky
Starship Troopers

What else? Swerve Chomsky mate – or don’t, but recognise he’s a million miles from George Orwell and some of the other authors mentioned. Chomsky’s a polemecist with a pathological hatred of the USA – not in the same solar system as a nuanced writer like Orwell. It’s entertaining to listen to, and can be a thought-provoking in a small way, but ultimately it’s lightweight stuff (ironically, for such an academic heavyweight).

There’s also a couple of incidences of Chomsky stepping on his dick in horrendous fashion, and completely failing to acknowledge he was wrong (his infamous article on the Khmer rouge in Cambodia being the most prominent example – genocide? what genocide?). Everyone makes mistakes, but his dissembling, mealy-mouthed response to the whole world telling him he was wrong doesn’t sit right.

2retro4u
Marin County, Cali

It turns out that Orwell was far too optimistic.