Foreword from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen - cartoon Recombinant Records. This webpage originally contained a comic adaptation of part of the foreword to Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death.
This comic was respectfully removed in March 2012 due to the wishes of the copyright holders of the text. Do yourself a favour and read Neil Postman's words in full. Purchase a copy of Amusing Ourselves to Death new/used (aff). 1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
" Sixty years after the publication of Orwell's masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that crystal first line sounds as natural and compelling as ever. But when you see the original manuscript, you find something else: not so much the ringing clarity, more the obsessive rewriting, in different inks, that betrays the extraordinary turmoil behind its composition. Probably the definitive novel of the 20th century, a story that remains eternally fresh and contemporary, and whose terms such as "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "newspeak" have become part of everyday currency, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 65 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, giving George Orwell a unique place in world literature.
The circumstances surrounding the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four make a haunting narrative that helps to explain the bleakness of Orwell's dystopia.