Post: #1

1984 is frankly, not a very good book. Every work of art comes form somewhere. So "1984" had to come from somewhere. And so, where did "1984" come from?

Many "SJWs" really like this book.

But did Orwell have much real world experience living under the "systems of oppression" that SJWs harp about? Not really. He worked as a policeman in Burma for a couple of years, probably saw some shit, but probably not much more than anyone else working a similar gig would have seen. And his own life there didn't seem to involve much struggle. He got to hang out in the officer's club, eat well cooked meals three times a day, and basically live like a king in comparison to the rest of the population. After he got tired of that and went through his male "epiphany" phase, he ditched it and zipped back to Europe, where it appears he spent the majority of the middle of his life living with his parents in England or fucking off in Paris.

In the late 1930s, in an act of true white knight stupidity, Orwell decided to go fight for the Communists in Spain. Even Henry Miller told him so:

"Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining with Henry Miller in Paris on the way. The American writer told Orwell that going to fight in the Civil War there out of some sense of obligation or guilt was 'sheer stupidity,' and that the Englishman's ideas 'about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney."

Once he got there he seemed surprised that his ideals of righteousness and nobility were in short supply in the reality of violent revolutionary conflict. If Curtis LeMay had been around he would have told him simply "All war is immoral", but the firebombing and incineration of entire Japanese and German cities by fleets of sleek silver bombers, engineered by men who would never in their lives see the front line, was still several years away.

Henry Miller was too right! And Orwell was nearly killed for his pathological idealism.

So all of this gives a little background, but the question remains: where did "1984" really come from? I'll give you my hypothesis:

George Orwell was angry at the world for not being what he wanted it to be. Not to put too fine a point upon it, but he was probably angry for the simple fact that he didn't get laid very often.

Could the explaination be that simple? Who has a thresome with two sweet Parisian girls (and there was probably no place in the world at that time that the women were more DTF than 1920s Paris) and decides they want to write a novel about caged rats that want to gnaw people's faces off? Reading about Orwell's romantic life (what little there is), it seems to be "compliment and cuddle" all the way. He probably got fixated on a girl and asked her to marry him right away and, much like today, she would say "eek no thanks" and head for the hills.

In the "love story" of "1984" anyone can tell that it's much like the "love story" of "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones", i.e. "The Way Shit Ain't Happen."

The real villain of "1984" is not Big Brother, but Winston Smith. A sad, gullible, tortured man, who even though is possessed of a modicum of power which he could have used for good, decides that he's doomed and seeks out his ruin. Perhaps like Orwell, Smith chose never to see the good in the world, but instead decided the world was an evil, fallen place that did not deserve him, and that he must somehow strike out against it. He never made a single person's life better in the world of "1984", and in fact made people's lives worse, including the one woman on the planet who for some reason which remains unclear, loved him. And in the end, they both got exactly what they were asking for. Perhaps Orwell was more self-aware than I realize.

Watch "Brazil." Or "Gandhi." Leave "1984" collecting dust on the shelf.

Post: #2

Well, I couldnt make it past chapter one of 1984. So yeah, I thought it was lousy. But Animal Farm is amazing and genius.

By the way I read is biography. His lover described his lovemaking as clumsy.

Post: #3

Another reason I can't stomach it is that it's just so painfully humorless and serious. Even a dark as night novel like "Sophie's Choice" had some really amusing parts as well.

Post: #4

I love 1984. Everyone loves 1984, and phrases, terms, and even the title of the book are constantly being used as shortcuts to coming up with their own ideas by people on all sides of the political spectrum, which, by the way, Orwell would have hated:

Quote:A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

(From "Politics and the English Language", an essay worth rereading annually.)

http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/poli...h/e_polit/


At the same time, I always admire a man willing to wade in there and trash something everyone loves.

Post: #5

Who cares if SJW's like it?

SJW's also happen to like identity arguments, so a book written by a blind pangender transdolphin with hooks for hands is automatically better than one written by a man.

Your critique basically ignores the content of the book and boils down to "well he never lived in truly oppressive conditions". This sounds like the argument of an SJW.

Tom Clancy writes constantly about war, yet he was a chickenshit draft dodger. Doesn't mean he can't spin a decent yarn.

Also, I did a little googling and discovered that plenty of SJW's don't like it.

They don't like it because there is a scene where Winston's girlfriend put on makeup and her transformation was "startling" and it made her more "feminine".

Yes, in a cruel, dystopian world, the SJW's still have time to be the thought police in our own world with not one single hint of irony.

You might as well have posted this in the "Famous books that you thought sucked" thread instead of making a whole new one.

Post: #6

Yea I didn't like 1984. It made me think, and thinking hurts. I'd much rather watch an episode of "ow! my balls".





Rather than discuss the merits of incredibly groundbreaking concepts like doublethink, thought crime, 20 minutes of hate, we've always been at war with EastAsia, the false sense of security from a paternal state "big brother", and the satirical treatment of the proles, let's engage in ad hominem against the author and raise red herrings to discredit the work as much as possible.

Whatever you do, do not read this book and become a thought criminal.

Post: #7

Didn't realize there was a specific thread for this sort of thing. I'll cetainly check that out.

It's a fantasy novel. Some of the concepts listed by ThoughtGypsy have a kernel of truth, but at the end of the day Orwell's imaginary world, to my mind, has as much connection to reality as Middle Earth.

The purpose wasn't to demolish Orwell's philosophy, whatever it may be, by way of ad-hominems. He may be right about everything he predicts, who can say. Tolkien never lived in Middle Earth. So why write a series of novels about Elves and wizards? Because Tolkien was a linguist, and Middle Earth was his vehicle for expressing the linguistic concepts he wished to express, and also likely a Christian parable (though not as heavy handed as his contemporary CS Lewis.) Orwell never lived in Eurasia. So what is that novel the vehicle for? What place does it come from? Every work of art comes from somewhere.

My point is that I feel it comes out of a place of basically narcissistic anger, not genuine concern. And that gives me an uncomfortable feeling about the legitimacy of the message - because that's precisely where many of the political philosophies of the extreme left and right come from.

Someone who had actually lived under a police state would never have written a novel like that. Like Clancy's work, it's a good yarn, but on this forum it often seems that on the ground experience is considered more valuable than armchair philosophizing. Not sure why Orwell gets a pass.

I saw some books by Clancy in the supermarket, stocked next to a bunch of cheesy chick lit novels. It's an appropriate place for them, as they're essentially the same genre.

Maybe I'm already a thought criminal by not liking it. Ooh, so meta.

Post: #8

Is it a well-written book? No. Orwell was not a particularly great writer.

There's a difference between a well-written book and an important book.

Post: #9

It's a great book that should serve as a warning to a thinking man about the perils of over reaching government and the dangers of group think as we see it happening today.

Maybe you took the shortcut and watched the horrible movie adaptation of the book, then I could understand your stance. But, no, the book is excellent. As for the author, I never cared to know much about him, lest it taint my perception of a remarkable story.

And the "love" story aspect is a small, secondary part at best. It's a way to contrast the bleakness and oppression with hope and a realization that there are things out in the world that one just has to experience for themselves.

Post: #10

I thought 1984 was the perfect book. Concise, brutal and makes its points well.

Animal Farm is another great. I think Orwell was a genius.

Post: #11

(05-22-2016 12:21 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  Yea I didn't like 1984. It made me think, and thinking hurts. I'd much rather watch an episode of "ow! my balls".

Rather than discuss the merits of incredibly groundbreaking concepts like doublethink, thought crime, 20 minutes of hate, we've always been at war with EastAsia, the false sense of security from a paternal state "big brother", and the satirical treatment of the proles, let's engage in ad hominem against the author and raise red herrings to discredit the work as much as possible.

Whatever you do, do not read this book and become a thought criminal.

Hear, hear.... it is a more relevant work today than it ever was; How can anyone with their eyes open who's swallowed the red pill not think it important??

Post: #12

(05-22-2016 12:39 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  It's a fantasy novel. Some of the concepts listed by ThoughtGypsy have a kernel of truth, but at the end of the day Orwell's imaginary world, to my mind, has as much connection to reality as Middle Earth.

The purpose wasn't to demolish Orwell's philosophy, whatever it may be, by way of ad-hominems. He may be right about everything he predicts, who can say. Tolkien never lived in Middle Earth. So why write a series of novels about Elves and wizards? Because Tolkien was a linguist, and Middle Earth was his vehicle for expressing the linguistic concepts he wished to express, and also likely a Christian parable (though not as heavy handed as his contemporary CS Lewis.) Orwell never lived in Eurasia.

Why do anything? Why not just end it all, now?

   

(05-22-2016 12:39 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  So what is that novel the vehicle for? What place does it come from? Every work of art comes from somewhere.

So where did this thread come from, then?

(05-22-2016 12:39 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  My point is that I feel it comes out of a place of basically narcissistic anger, not genuine concern. And that gives me an uncomfortable feeling about the legitimacy of the message - because that's precisely where many of the political philosophies of the extreme left and right come from

Narcissistic self aggrandizement, perhaps?

G

Post: #13

Post: #14

(05-22-2016 11:09 AM)Pride male Wrote:  Well, I couldnt make it past chapter one of 1984. So yeah, I thought it was lousy. But Animal Farm is amazing and genius.

By the way I read is biography. His lover described his lovemaking as clumsy.

Animal farm is terrible because of the part where a bunch of animals fess up to crimes they didn't commit, and face execution, because of Napoleon egging them on. No one acts anything like that in real life.

Post: #15

(05-22-2016 04:00 PM)Walker Wrote:  Animal farm is terrible because of the part where a bunch of animals fess up to crimes they didn't commit, and face execution, because of Napoleon egging them on. No one acts anything like that in real life.

Oh yes they do.

Animal Farm is a parable about the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Where Orwell has those animals do those things he is referring to the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930's where prominent members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were arrested and tortured both mentally and physically by the secret police until they confessed to spying for Nazi Germany or Great Britain, attempting to kill Stalin, being anti-Communist in general, or deliberately trying to sabotage and betray the Soviet Union. The defendants either broke down mentally or confessed like many innocent people in trouble do in our society-- they couldn't win at trial but expected a lighter sentence for a guilty plea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials

A similar thing also happened in China in the 60's and 70's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

Oh and 1984 as a book? Very good book. Well written and constructed. It pretty much is the example of how to write message fiction properly. I really don't get how anyone here can't like it. Yeah, there are better written novels from that time period so if someone does not like it on technical merit that's something I disagree with but am willing to concede to on matter of personal taste. On the other hand equating its warning against totalitarianism to Orwell being a beta male bitch and attributing the novel to Orwell's alleged narcissism or supposed inability to get laid is ridiculous. Dumbest thing I've heard in awhile.

As far as modern SJWism is concerned go read Orwell's nonfiction. He was denouncing it and the mentality that makes it possible 80 years ago.

Post: #16

(05-22-2016 04:00 PM)Walker Wrote:  Animal farm is terrible because of the part where a bunch of animals fess up to crimes they didn't commit, and face execution, because of Napoleon egging them on. No one acts anything like that in real life.

You're dead wrong, Orwell nailed it: that was exactly how it went down decades later during the Cultural Revolution in China or under the Khmer in Cambodia. 60M + dead, IRL.

Orwell was a genius, and one of the most powerful modern political and social critics. Contrary to what the OP wrote, GO had a great amount of real life experience, part of the reason his insights were so sharp. He was a consummate insider as an Eton/Cambridge product, he worked in the heart of the beast in the Ministry of Information (the model for his 1984 Ministry of Propaganda) and in far-flung reaches of the British Empire as a cog of the system.

He distanced himself from his conservative background and turned left, living in the forefront of that cultural circle in working class Paris and Republican Spain, yet he also had enough critical thought and perspective to see the degeneracy on the left. 1984 was mostly a condemnation of Soviet totalitariansm. Yet even as a leftist, Orwell saw that communist regimes were incredibly repressive and dystopian while many in the west lacked his perspective and were prone to marxist propaganda.

Where Orwell was wrong was that he thought the soviet marxist model would come to dominate western societies. He was way off, Huxley's Brave New World is much closer. Huxley predicted that the people would willingly embrace the tools of their cultural destruction, he understood cultural marxism, as part of the Tavistock machine. Here is what Huxley said in 1961:

Quote:There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.

and in a follow-up speech at Berkeley the year after:

Quote:. . .we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions shall we say, and this is a problem which has interested me many years and about which I wrote thirty years ago, a fable, Brave New World, which is an account of society making use of all the devices available and some of the devices which I imagined to be possible making use of them in order to, first of all, to standardize the population, to iron out inconvenient human differences, to create, to say, mass produced models of human beings arranged in some sort of scientific caste system. Since then, I have continued to be extremely interested in this problem and I have noticed with increasing dismay a number of the predictions which were purely fantastic when I made them thirty years ago have come true or seem in process of coming true.

Sex, drugs and Rock'n Roll were basically Tavistock Institute social engineering products (see John Coleman and others). Henry Miller btw wasn't better because he banged chicks in Paris, he was a degenerate who was part of the individualistic hedonist cultural forces which destabilized the west, it started there, in 1920s Europe. Judging the worth of an intellectual by his notch count is misguided, to say the least.

While Orwell wasn't as prescient as Huxley on the evolution of western social control, he had tremendous foresight on matters such as the use of language as a tool for cultural indoctrination and political domination, like the marginalization of normal behavior with words like "cisgender". Imagine how retarded that notion could seem to someone from the 1990s, yet that type of language and the social system it represents are becoming the norm among the young elites, entrenched within univerisities and corporate systems.

No one understood that better than Orwell. He would have undoubtedly torn apart SJWs, exposing their insidious methodologies, with which he was very familiar as a government propagandist.

Post: #17

(05-22-2016 04:00 PM)Walker Wrote:  Animal farm is terrible because of the part where a bunch of animals fess up to crimes they didn't commit, and face execution, because of Napoleon egging them on. No one acts anything like that in real life.

That's precisely what happened during the 1930's Soviet show trials. Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and a whole bunch of other high-up rivals of Stalin were made to confess to crimes they clearly didn't commit, and were then executed. Perhaps they partially "confessed" out of loyalty to the party, but it's very probable that they did so because their families were threatened with punishment if they didn't.

It was a deeply ugly scene, which laid quite bare the insanity and brutality of communist ideology, and was a turning point for many intellectuals who previously sympathized with the Soviet Union. Though I've never read the book, I'm quite confident that when Orwell cites this, he's speaking directly to that moment in history, and pointing to the questioning of the Marxist faith that it caused (especially among intellectuals who should've known better all along).

And now I see this point has already been made by two previous posters...

Post: #18

(05-22-2016 05:53 PM)911 Wrote:  Henry Miller btw wasn't better because he banged chicks in Paris, he was a degenerate who was part of the individualistic hedonist cultural forces which destabilized the west, it started there, in 1920s Europe. Judging the worth of an intellectual by his notch count is misguided, to say the least.

Orwell's essay Inside the Whale tackles Henry Miller's attitude. Orwell likened the concern for chasing poosy and other hedonistic activities while ignoring the big political and social movements happening then (the 1930's) to the biblical Jonah-- being inside a whale. He meant by that that people were turning their backs on the horrors of the modern world and adopting a fatalistic approach and seeking personal experience over living a civic-minded life.

Worth reading and pondering. Especially since being inside the whale is similar in many ways to what we'd call today "enjoying the decline." For that matter, it's worth pondering the Stoics in ancient Rome; men taking up an ethical system and trying to live as close to their personal philosophy as possible in light of increasing tyranny and severe social breakdowns.

The more things change...

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/english/e_itw

Post: #19

What's the book about? I was around then but I don't read books.

Post: #20

(05-22-2016 12:39 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  Didn't realize there was a specific thread for this sort of thing. I'll cetainly check that out.

It's a fantasy novel. Some of the concepts listed by ThoughtGypsy have a kernel of truth, but at the end of the day Orwell's imaginary world, to my mind, has as much connection to reality as Middle Earth.

The purpose wasn't to demolish Orwell's philosophy, whatever it may be, by way of ad-hominems. He may be right about everything he predicts, who can say. Tolkien never lived in Middle Earth. So why write a series of novels about Elves and wizards? Because Tolkien was a linguist, and Middle Earth was his vehicle for expressing the linguistic concepts he wished to express, and also likely a Christian parable (though not as heavy handed as his contemporary CS Lewis.) Orwell never lived in Eurasia. So what is that novel the vehicle for? What place does it come from? Every work of art comes from somewhere.

My point is that I feel it comes out of a place of basically narcissistic anger, not genuine concern. And that gives me an uncomfortable feeling about the legitimacy of the message - because that's precisely where many of the political philosophies of the extreme left and right come from.

Someone who had actually lived under a police state would never have written a novel like that. Like Clancy's work, it's a good yarn, but on this forum it often seems that on the ground experience is considered more valuable than armchair philosophizing. Not sure why Orwell gets a pass.

I saw some books by Clancy in the supermarket, stocked next to a bunch of cheesy chick lit novels. It's an appropriate place for them, as they're essentially the same genre.

Maybe I'm already a thought criminal by not liking it. Ooh, so meta.

Wrong genre. 1984 is not a fantasy novel. It is, specifically, a dystopian work. Per Wikipedia, dystopia, derived as an opposite or contrast to the Greek utopia, is defined as an alternate society characterized by a focus on that which is contrary to the author's ethos, portraying it as mass poverty, public mistrust and suspicion, police state, and/or oppression. Most authors of dystopian fiction explore at least one reason why things are that way, often as an analogy for similar issues in the real world. In the words of Keith M. Booker, dystopian literature is used to "provide fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable."

As to why authors -- and there are many, over 400 novels in the 19th century and over 1,000 in the 20th -- choose to write dystopian fiction, one of Dan Simmons' articles describes the urge:

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2011_06.htm

Quote:I believe that almost every writer has at least one dystopian novel in him or her that's clawing and scratching to get out. Flashback, released on July 1 of 2011, has successfully clawed itself into existence. It will be my one and only dystopian novel. I think it will be a worthwhile and perhaps even memorable reading experience for anyone willing to take the ride.

Why Write Dystopian Novels?

In a 1969 interview, Kurt Vonnegut said -- " I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever."

For anyone who doesn't quite get the canary in the coal mine analogy, here's a linked explanation -- "The classic example of animals serving as sentinels is the canary in the coal mine. Well into the 20th century, coal miners in the United Kingdom and the United States brought canaries into coal mines as an early-warning signal for toxic gases including methane and carbon monoxide. The birds, being more sensitive, would become sick before the miners, who would then have a chance to escape or put on protective respirators."

Well, to be honest, most of those birds didn't "become sick"; they fell off their perch and went belly up and stone dead. The canaries had ceased to be. The canaries had gone to meet their maker. They were ex-canaries..

So those of us who write dystopian novels do so because we're weaker than the "more robust types" who can carry on with business as usual (even making profits and joining the Führer's favorite country club) through the increasing noxious gases of fascism or communism or limitless capitalism or attacks on our language or attacks on our intelligence and our deepest sense of reality and morality. This particular Vonnegutian super-sensitive canary in its cage on a long pole explores -- in the novel Flashback -- the possibility that the United States of America, if it continues accruing debt without rethinking its spending and social welfare programs, could implode in sudden and total bankruptcy, losing not only its position in the world but its own sense of self for hundreds of millions of its citizens.

In Flashback, this canary also imagines a cheap and available drug called flashback; a drug that allows hundreds of millions of Americans to find an escape hatch from life in such a damned and dismal future simply by reliving the good parts of their former lives. Over and over. And over. Twenty puny newbucks buys twenty perfect memories. And not just mere memories -- a full-sensory reliving of those minutes and hours and days we'd once thought lost forever.

So -- like Sir Thomas More, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Burgess, and literally hundreds of other authors ---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dystopian_novels

--- I confess that I have a canary-in-the-mineshaft weakness to certain noxious gases in the air these days. Each canary, it seems, falls off his or her perch and goes belly up in the cage at different times, in different parts of the mine, reacting to different -- but perhaps equally noxious -- gases.

Flashback is where I topple off my perch and go belly up with the best of them.

What Do the Best Dystopian Novels Give Us?

The language of these "noxious gases" speaks to us across the decades: Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and Memory hole all set off alarm bells -- even for those pre- or post-literates who never read the book 1984.

In the 1980's, state legislators in Midwestern tornado-alley states pondered making it a legal requirement to add a $5 chip to all televisions; the chip would allow state and federal authoritites to turn on the television in sleeping families' homes from a distant government disaster center, tuning the set to maximum volume, thus assuring that otherwise helpless families in a tornado's path would hear the tornado alert. Thousands of lives could be saved by such a simple, inexpensive early-warning system. All it required was one little harmless, inexpensive chip in the TV's remote control memory, allowing it to be turned on from afar when a twister was in the area.

Both state and federal legislators voted down the idea by a wide margin. The reason, they said, was that it "smacked of Big Brother". It may be that a majority of those senators and congresspeople hadn't even read the book. No matter. Orwell's idea is in the air now, perhaps in our genes.

Almost every American has an aversion to Big Brother, even if they don't know who the hell he was. Big Brother was a gift to freedom-loving peoples from George Orwell, who also gave us such concepts as -- War is Peace!, Freedom is Slavery!, Ignorance is Strength !

Each generation -- whether they have read Orwell's canary-in-the-cage novel 1984 or not -- learns, in its own way and unique context how to be wary of such triumphant statements by whatever party or person in power. War is not peace, and no amount of Orwellian Newspeak can make it so. In a real sense, the novel 1984 was like a smallpox or polio vaccination to immunize future generations from the plague of Ingsoc where the Ministry of Truth, when not spreading its propaganda, is watching us 24/7 through omnipresent telescreens.

So, one can ask, did the book 1984, written in 1948, help us avoid living in a real "1984"? For hundreds of millions of human beings under Communist and various dictators' rule during the second half of the 20th Century, it didn't. They experienced all -- or at least most -- of 1984's perverse horrors and more.

But for Americans and other free peoples, it's my opinion that 1984 has raised, for even the most "robust" among us, a hyper-awareness to certain noxious gases. (You don't have to be a supersensitive canary to detect such gases; you just have to watch the damned and doomed canary.)

Is Flashback A Novel Stating Dan Simmons's Political Biases? In a word . . . no. In two words . . . hell no.

I spent 18 years as an elementary classroom teacher (and loved it!) and one of the things I was proud of when I ended that career and moved on to another one (writing) is that after working with hundreds of kids in so many interesting ways, including "Black History" lectures, social studies simulations such as our five days of "The Cuban Missile Crisis" and the gifted/talented APEX program I helped create to serve thousands of bright kids -- after all that, I stake my reputation that not one of those students I taught ever left with even a hint of my stand on religion or politics or any other adults-only issues. It was simply not my role as an educator to share them.

After 29 novels published, I want (and trust) the same to be true with those who read my novels. I have my own core beliefs, but my profession here is to speculate, not to argue my opinions or to pretend to be a prophet. That latter skill, prophecy. like the trick of walking on water, hasn't been done well in a long, long time.

Finally, it's also true that I've noticed that even the most famous (and popular) (and beloved) writers from the 20th and 21st Century can be abysmally stupid when it comes to politics. This tendency toward idiotic political opinions may be one of the very few ways in which novelists and poets are like movie stars and rock idols.

One is more likely to receive a more common-sense political view and interesting speculation about the future by asking an average citizen on the street than by querying most writers.

And yet . . . .

The Vonnegut--canaries amongst us do fall off our perches from time to time.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #21

(05-22-2016 04:00 PM)Walker Wrote:  Animal farm is terrible because of the part where a bunch of animals fess up to crimes they didn't commit, and face execution, because of Napoleon egging them on. No one acts anything like that in real life.

I thought you were being sarcastic here, but maybe I'm the one not reading it correctly...

Post: #22

(05-22-2016 08:38 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2011_06.htm

Quote:In the 1980's, state legislators in Midwestern tornado-alley states pondered making it a legal requirement to add a $5 chip to all televisions; the chip would allow state and federal authorities to turn on the television in sleeping families' homes from a distant government disaster center, tuning the set to maximum volume, thus assuring that otherwise helpless families in a tornado's path would hear the tornado alert. Thousands of lives could be saved by such a simple, inexpensive early-warning system. All it required was one little harmless, inexpensive chip in the TV's remote control memory, allowing it to be turned on from afar when a twister was in the area.

Both state and federal legislators voted down the idea by a wide margin. The reason, they said, was that it "smacked of Big Brother". It may be that a majority of those senators and congresspeople hadn't even read the book. No matter. Orwell's idea is in the air now, perhaps in our genes.

The irony is that system was actually a pretty good idea that might have saved lives, and would likely have been user disable-able from the TV's control panel or configuration menu, or simply by switching the set off from a wall switch instead of the power button, so had a low potential for actual abuse.

Meanwhile people gladly accept real "Big Brother" type technologies, like Pagerank and GPS tracking, simply for reasons of convenience.

Post: #23

I don't think it's a lousy book.

I think what happened is that over the years its characters and plot have been referenced and quoted so much that the book lost its power to shock because it's become so familiar.

When it came it, out part of its appeal was that it dared to say things no one had said. Well, we've now had a half-century of people repeating things like the phrase "Big Brother" endlessly, so the book now seems predictable.

On top of that, the book has been written about so much that it can't help be anticlimactic to anyone who reads it now for the first time.

***

I found that same thing happened when it came to old music. There's been so much written about various '60s albums by the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan that I found they didn't quite match the decades of hype that preceded them.

What I did instead was found old music that few people had ever heard, so I'm able to be surprised by it. Maybe the original poster can unearth an old book about the future no one knows and it'll be more powerful because it has nothing to live up to.

Post: #24

Orwell was a genius and both 1984 and Animal Farm are fantastic and powerful works and should be mandatory reading for everyone. OP is just trying to stir some controversy.

(05-22-2016 06:29 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  What's the book about? I was around then but I don't read books.

Either you know perfectly well what the book is about and you're being disingenuous to keep the "ignorant mechanic who has no time nor curiosity for that fancy intellectual non sense" façade (most likely) or you really don't know what's it about and somehow are proud of your ignorance by stating you don't read books (I don't believe it), which one is it?

Post: #25

(05-22-2016 11:15 PM)Teutatis Wrote:  Orwell was a genius and both 1984 and Animal Farm are fantastic and powerful works and should be mandatory reading for everyone. OP is just trying to stir some controversy.

Orwell's nightmare totalitarian state ruled by a shadowy, powerful elite which maintains absolute power in in perpetuity through scrutinizing the tiniest details of every citizen is a fantasy. It's logistically impossible; so is a society where everyone informs on everyone else as you just have a huge mass of conflicting information that's totally useless. In a sense a government that knows everything about its subjects knows nothing - even with computers it's way too much information to ever make any sense out of.

Nearly every real police state vaguely resembling the type Orwell envisioned collapsed, and collapsed rapidly. Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China (North Korea is a poor example, as it would collapse tomorrow if not for the boatloads of humanitarian aid it gets from more sensible nations, including the US.) The leaders forget the true nature of power, which is based on trust - not fear, and finally who they're working for: us. And so they get their throats slit.

Isaac Asimov pretty much said it best: "The true horror of his picture of 1984 is his eloquent description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco."

Another great criticism made by Asimov is that the novel's focus on history re-writing is absurd. In the real world, it's not even necessary because nobody cares. It's like, tell people "Hey, the US and Russia are friends now" and they'll say "Okay." "But don't you realize that we were enemies just a decade ago?" "Sure, that's fine." You don't even have to expunge history, because in general nobody even cares or bothers to look.