Alex James's Blog: AlexJamesNovels Blog - Posts Tagged "1984"

‘Dyspheria is, always was, and always will be, the greatest threat to humanity.’

Liberty Farm (LF) is a prescient dystopian novel of a future Earth that has been saved by the ‘Writer’ after a mass outbreak of the VIRUS, dyspheria, ended what was left of human civilisation. People are safe now they’re in Liberty Farm but something is amiss when the Writer is ready to step down from his position and allow a politician clone Dean Perish to replace him, making systems monitor Christopher deeply uncomfortable ... The virus has never been under control, but it’s getting worse, and a mysterious red-haired woman keeps appearing to leave Christopher clues. Is there more behind the rumours of hacking, and Liberty Farm itself, than life as he knows it?

As with comparable classics by George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K Dick, Liberty Farm is about hiding the truth; and the relentless uncompromising search for a solution to the inconvenient human individual’s freedom, love, creativity, and imagination.

Same as the classics, but how is LF different?
Liberty Farm transcends time, linking outdated ideas of the human being’s ideal appearance and performance to the ideal resident – not citizen – who is completely reliant on external technology in the farm and is expected to support the most popular electoral candidates; and this compliance is enforced through intrusive surveillance in public areas and regular internal assessments. I mean, residents are basically hooked into the mainframe that monitors their behaviour. Christopher can’t get too excited, or probably even fart, without his bosses knowing about it.

The idea of perfection of the rehabilitated resident is the driving force in life for dormant and lower-class symptomatic residents, to become ‘the emune’ who are entitled to material privileges. You’ve got to work for your future, the dream, to become the emune. In this sense, I felt LF was a criticism of modern-day meritocracy, of chasing the out-of-reach dream that is presented to us.

LF is a dystopian novel of severity:
Technology has advanced to regulate behaviour with audioprogramming feeding nonsense sensations and emotions into our ears to help with work performance while holographic screens circulate before our eyes. Every time Christopher is in the public bar Body, he’s exposed to the ‘libervision’ news.

Our BRAINs are not our own:
1) They’re downloading updates to and from the mainframe.
2) ‘BRAINs released small doses of reward chemicals during the shopping experience itself as well as larger amounts after purchases.’
3) The media plays strongly on the threat to BRAINs hackers pose from those lower-class symptomatic residents – where dyspheria is prevalent.

How did all this happen? It started with a virus: ‘Lived to this day by all its residents, still affected by the disease more than a century after the Outbreak’. And it really is still lived to this day: ‘Residents are politely asked to finish their drinks and return to their homes by nine for hibernation. Return to your home by nine for hibernation.’

Overall
LF has a strong foundation in psychiatry and lucid dreaming, as well as the science fiction dystopian genre itself. For readers who want to read what Earth could be like in so many years, LF is a plausible account, original in its construction. I’d say it’s for readers who like to be intellectually challenged, to see the world from different angles and immerse themselves in the dimensions and texture of the farm. The feeling throughout is one of calm gentle curiosity, and though LF can be compared to classics in quality and genre, you finish realising you haven’t read a book quite like it.

What’s it about?
Many of the early chapters of the story are pure worldbuilding, giving the reader blocks of information about past and present reality in an unknown year thought to be 1984, when Big Brother’s revolution has succeeded. History, and therefore reality, is at the mercy of Big Brother’s Party, and so is fiction when it is permitted to exist. As in most dystopian novels of this type, Winston Smith is an ordinary guy at an ordinary job, bored even, yet allowing his liberal thoughts to roam, which is the only freedom he has. He’s being watched by telescreens in the corridor, and in his own apartment. Outside, there are spies and microphones everywhere looking for aberrations of personality or behaviour that can be seen as evidence of treachery against the Party, or anything different.

Sex has been repressed, seen as the energy that can work against party community and worship, and the hysteria lack of sex creates works in the Party’s favour. Sex happens to be one of the things lonely Winston craves, embodied by young and attractive Julia, who is a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and her membership must seem like irony to Winston, believing she’s a spy for the Thought Police.

Praise
1984 gives us a taste of a world we may have been starting to step into in the 20th century, of leader worship, totalitarianism, and a party or nation above all individual thought and freedom, which is now seen as insanity. The past has been all but erased, and members of the party are forced to accept this or commit an act of ‘thought crime’. Reality is shaped continuously. Life is always getting better, and the enemy has always been the same, even when the enemy changes every so often. Failure to accept these tenets is dangerous.

‘It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.’

1984 can induce nightmares: the thought of a government knowing your every thought and using it against you to betray those you hold most dear, waiting in the wings long enough to ensure the utter downfall of your individual self and connections. Later, we don’t see a character have individual thoughts; we see them quacking along with the rest of the hateful masses. The thought that a human being could lose their individuality in such a fashion to become a cog in a societal machine, is reason to see this book as terrifying, yet immensely valuable in its warning of a time when we may begin to enter such a type of society again.

Criticism
It’s not until Winston meets Julia that the story really gets going. On a first read, the ideas are novel, but on the second read they are of interest but can become a touch laborious for a novel by today’s standards, being more focused on political ideology, however, they do well in showing a world where the ideas are inhuman and alien.

Conclusion
1984 is a terrifying vision of what we hope won’t become the future, based, it seems, on disturbing chapters of human history and taken to the extreme. Inferiority is proved after torture, individuality is erased, and so much is spied upon and known by the Party you no longer believe you can maintain freedom or loyalty to anybody. The message: you will love Big Brother, whether you want to, or not!