LITERATURE - George Orwell

10 Songs Inspired by George Orwell's 1984 Consumer reports can tell you a lot about society. South Korea’s decriminalization of adultery made condom sales skyrocket in 2015. In December of 1999, Americans bought record amounts of bottled water for fear of Y2K. James Dacre: are we living Brave New World's nightmare future? Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 in the shadow of the first world war, the Wall Street Crash and a devastating flu virus that had claimed millions of lives. The Treaty of Versailles had carved out a new Europe, while electricity, the automobile, production lines, new mass media and aeroplanes were changing the world. England was in the grip of a depression, but science and technology promised a better future: a world where disease, drudgery and poverty might no longer exist. Very few writers were bold enough to challenge this naive optimism but in Brave New World, Huxley certainly did; now his work, adapted by Dawn King for the stage and premiering at Royal and Derngate, Northampton, challenges audiences to do the same. Huxley was concerned with those who had little say in their society, who were at the mercy of an all-powerful elite. This is a world where people think they are always happy, always get what they want, and never want what they can’t have.

Huxley vs. Orwell: The Webcomic Stuart McMillen’s webcomic adapts (and updates) Postman’s famous book-length essay, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argues that Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in Brave New World was ultimately more accurate than the one proposed by George Orwell in 1984. (Via). Like this: Like Loading... Autodale (dystopian short film series) A little less than a year ago, I discovered “Being Pretty”, a dystopian short film that takes place in Autodale, a city where robots control society and keep everything “pretty”. Its author is David Armsby, a young artist from the UK about whom I haven’t been able to find much more information… Hello, citizens of Autodale! You are pretty. Your neighbours, friends and family are also pretty. But sadly, not everyone is pretty.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four So we’re in the Senate House of the University of London. This is an enormous 1930s tower that dominates the landscape that it’s over, and Orwell was interested in it, his first wife Eileen worked here, and in the Second World War it was the headquarters of the Ministry of Information, which controlled the press, propaganda and censorship. So in many ways very much like the Ministry of Truth in the novel. And he would see this building every day, and it stands proud above its landscape. 1984 Quotes by George Orwell “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

So Are We Living in 1984? Since last week’s revelations of the scope of the United States’ domestic surveillance operations, George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which was published sixty-four years ago this past Saturday, has enjoyed a massive spike in sales. The book has been invoked by voices as disparate as Nicholas Kristof and Glenn Beck. Even Edward Snowden, the twenty-nine-year-old former intelligence contractor turned leaker, sounded, in the Guardian interview in which he came forward, like he’d been guided by Orwell’s pen. But what will all the new readers and rereaders of Orwell’s classic find when their copy arrives? Nineteen Eighty-Four turns sixty THERE ARE no doubt many thousands of people who know that Oliver Twist famously said, “Please sir, I want some more.” Some books, some plays, just enter the collective consciousness without necessarily being read by those who make reference to them. Think of all those who can intone “To be or not to be – that is the question” without having come within a bull’s roar of Hamlet.