News from Brownbackistan - Constitutional Crisis

[RKP5637]

11. Or mandatory use of Soma. (Brownbackistan is now clearly a fly-over state.)

George Orwell’s 1984 and The Beginnings of Cyberclunk

After Wells we see two popular dystopias about totalitarian oppression, first Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and then, nearly a decade later, George Orwell’s 1984. These are by no means the first depictions of future dystopias (Even Shelly wrote one of her own) but both were significant for their criticism of the industrial class structure, and of the two, Orwell’s 1984 heralds a new kind of science fiction.

Huxley’s is a dystopian romance, a smooth running machine with technology that meets every practical need. Everyone is kept content with the ubiquitous happy pill Soma and encouraged to be good consumers. A eugenic system is in place that establishes both intellect and class at birth (echoes of Wells’ Time Machine). This is science fiction as futurism, and the vehicle is still smooth as glass technology.

http://mickeymaxwell.blogspot.com/2013/05/george-orwells-1984-first-cyberclunk.html