1985: A historical report (Hongkong 2036) from the Hungarian of ***

by György Dalos, Stuart Hood (Translator), Estella Schmid (Translator)

January 3, 1985. The announcement comes over the telescreen: Big Brother is dead. His empire, Oceania, has been defeated in a disastrous air battle and is no more. Only two great powers remain: Eurasia and Eastasia. Behind the scenes Big Sister (Big Brother's widow) struggles with the Thought Police and the army for power, while elsewhere the winds of reform sweep through the remnants of Oceania.

Everywhere, under the bitingly humorous hand of Gyorgy Dalos, George Orwell's chilling world of "1984" seems to be experiencing a thaw, as Orwell's tortured lovers Smith and Julia, O'Brien the Thought Policeman, Ampleforth the hack poet, and Syme the cynical philologist come alive again. However, when the thaw becomes a revolution as the proles get involved, the now-friendly neighboring empire Eurasia steps in to "restore order."

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Hungary

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the inaugural entry to my newly constructed bookshelf, Life is Shit. It's not necessarily that life is shit in this book, but it is a reminder that the world is shit, which is the next line in the Dead Milkmen song entitled "Life is Shit", and since that song kept running through my head after finishing this book it deserved to get it's own new shelf.

A sequel to 1984. In it we find out that at the end of 1984 (the year) Big Brother dies, and leaves the world of Oceania in a sort of chaotic mess. The following year is told through the memoirs of three characters from the original novel, Winston Smith, Julia whatever her last name was, and some first name O'Brian (Thought Police guy in the Orwell novel). What follows the death of Big Brother (spoiler alert), is a slightly more open society, where individual freedoms sort of return, and the truth begins to leak out. The novel is being collected sometime in the middle of the 21st century by a Eurasia historian, to shed light on the transition period between what was Oceania and is now once again only England. In the course of 1985 the rule of Big Brother falls, and in it's place comes a shiny and happier form of totalitarianism, which is really as repressive and awful as the one in 1984, but which has traded in some of it's overt barbarity for the more subtle means of barbarism that alarmists and asshole reactionaries would say are present in late Capitalism and the culture industry. I mean, really the lives of this society is still as empty, but now they have well done pornography, telescreen's that show sporting events, and they are granted to right to play certain card games, but not others legally by the government, I mean that doesn't sound anything like certain things in our own society, does it? But I'm digressing.
My favorite part of the novel though has to be when (oh jeez spoiler alert deux), the Eurasian Army helps put down an Islamic uprising, and the weapons they carrying will only fire on people who aren't smiling. What a great picture, enforced outward happiness with no regard for what the person is feeling inside. But that's fiction, and there isn't really any kind of parallels to real life, except maybe perhaps that it sounds like the author may have gotten a hold of the original version of "California Uber Alles" (the one about Jerry Brown, not the one about Reagen).
This is much more interesting than the Anthony Burgess book of the same title, or maybe it's just more of what I was hoping the Burgess book would be.

[Patrick St-Amand · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sequel to my favorite book? Sounds interesting on paper but ends up kind of an odd duck. The premise is a collection of documents and eyewitness accounts of our favorite characters from 1984 following the death of Big Brother. My problem with this is based on MY understanding of Orwell's vision, that Big Brother was an entity and not one specific individual. Also, the historian's footnotes are interesting at first but get confusing and distracting near the end as he goes off the rails with his own issues of totalitarianism. I appreciate the author's intentions, that basically Oceania swapped one regime for another and their freedom is relative even 50 years after 1985 but it didn't quite do it for me. That said, i felt Julia, Winston and O'Brien's different courses were true to their character.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could never recommend this book to anyone but you should read it.

[Christian D. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase the late, great Howard Cosell (R.I.P, gone but not forgotten), "Down goes Big Brotha'! Down goes Big Brotha'!"

Ah yes, Big Brother, the infamous, omnipresent totalitarian communist supervillain from George Orwell's "1984," has finally died his long overdue, totally well-deserved death, and on top of that, Oceania's Air Force has suffered a crushing defeat which the Oceanian News Agency, even with its preponderance of telescreens, can no longer effectively dismiss or cover up. Thusly, B.B's cronies & toadies in Insoc's Inner Party and Thought Police--including the two-faced snake in the grass O'Brien--are sent into a tailspin of utter dismay and disarray; with no plan of succession in place for the passing of their Dear Leader (yes, I'm purposely and sarcastically borrowing the sobriquet for the deservedly deceased DPRK dictator Kim Jong-Il), they reluctantly concede that Oceania's government has to start enacting some degree of reforms.

Ergo, Orwell's previously star-crossed protagonist, Winston Smith, is resurrected by sequel author Gyorgy Dalos, or more accurately, rehabilitated (to use one of Nikita Khrushchev's favorite terms) and reprieved, along with lovely girlfriend Julia, Ampleforth, Parsons, and Syme (yes, the same same who had declared "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words" prior to his own fall from the Thought Police's good graces) and reprieved in order to help effect these reforms. Of course, there's a minor plot hole left by Mr. Dalos that doesn't explain how Winston and his fellow former political prisoners regain their rebellious spirit after they'd already been tortured and brainwashed into genuinely loving Big Brother by the end of the original Orwell novel, but eh, what the hell, chalk it up to poetic license.

Of course, not all perfect in this new paradise: (1) Big Brother's widow, Patricia Taylor AKA Big Sister and her band of so-called Alumnists stage an insurgency in an effort to maintain the Draconian status quo, which fortunately fails miserably; and (2) Winston and his fellow reformers in the newly formed Intellectual's Reform Association (IRA, how ironic) soon devolve into in-fighting and squabbling over just how much reform should be enacted in the new Oceania. The IRA soon splits into three camps: the Radicals (which Winston leads), the Centrists, and the Moderates (which Julia sides with). The Radical-Moderate divide ends up putting particular strain on Winston & Julia's relationship...I'll just leave it at that in order to avoid spoilers.

Things get even more complicated when the proles finally get involved and start rebelling; recall that in the Orwell novel, Winston had asserted that "Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they rebelled they cannot become conscious" and ""If there is hope, it lies with the Proles." Well, Winston, as the saying goes, "Be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it." To complicate matters even further, the prole rebellion is headed up by a charismatic young so-called "Mohammedan" of Indian-Pakistani descent, although--unlike the radical Islamists of present-day real world--the Mohammedans in this story advocate for all-around religious freedom. (At one point in the novel, O'Brien ignorantly refers to all Muslims as Arabs, even though there are *plenty* of non-Arab adherents to Islam, including the aforementioned Indo-Pakistani character.)

The storyline is presented from the POVs of Winston, Julia, and O'Brien alike, via their memoirs, which are prefaced, footnoted, and postscripted by an unnamed Eurasian historian in the year 2035; meanwhile, the Historian's footnotes reveal a subplot wherein he becomes increasingly frustrated and rebellious toward the Director of his own Institute for impingements of academic freedom.

We also get some interesting backstory on the key characters; besides the fact that Big Brother had a wife, we learn that Julia's surname is Miller and that O'Brien's first name is James. My only gripe is that we never learn whatever became of Charrington, that seedy little Thought Police worm who posed as the owner of an antique shop in the proles' neighborhood in order to trap Winston.

The author wrote the book in Communist-ruled Hungary in 1983, i.e. three years before Gorbachev's glasnost, six years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, seven years before German reunification, and eight years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The book proves itself remarkably prescient in many ways (though obviously not 100%), in terms of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the rise of political prominence of Indo-Pakistani Muslims in the UK.

Highly recommended reading for freedom lovers (gosh, it's so good to finally see Thought Police thugs getting beaten up and killed) and anticommunists everywhere, along with Anthony Burgess's book of the same title (which is actually two books in one, a sequel to "1984" and a critique of same). Full of delicious black comedy and political satire.

Favorite passages:

--p. 69 of the Pantheon Books paperback edition (from O'Brien's memoirs) "Oceania ceased to exist as a world power. Eurasia took from us all of America and also the states around the Mediterranean. There remained in fact what was only England and Northern Ireland -- that Northern Ireland whose fanatical Catholics remained recalcitrant even after three of Big Brother's punitive expeditions. It was some slight consolation that Eurasia received from us the equally stubborn Poles." Haha, Erin Go Bragh and Dominus Vobiscum!

--p. 71 (from the Historian's footnotes) "Here it is a question of two great powers, Eurasia and Oceania, and the so-called free islands --archaic capitalist Hongkong [sic], which maintained itself via financial speculation and entertainment industry and, secondly, the so-called Patriarchal Republic of the Congo, where fifteen native tribes with Indian immigrant workers maintained its industry with cocoa plantations. These two islands delivered indispensable luxury goods for the rest of the world and were therefore left alone in their autonomy although they were a center of exile for all super-powers." Alas, too bad Hong Kong is now being squeezed by totalitarian communist Beijing.

[James Reyome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wonder what happened after Winston Smith embraced his love of Big Brother? Well, I did, and one of the great "downer" books of all time has what amounts to a followup in Gyorgy Dalos' 1985.

Dalos subtitled this book What Happens After Big Brother Dies, and that pretty much describes this slim volume too, though it's not a narrative so much as it is a collection of "documents" written by the protagonists of the original story, predominately: Smith, his lover Julia Miller, and his torturer with the Thought Police, James O'Brien, though there are some descriptive elements from other voices for detail. It is assembled as a historical essay of sorts, and it is as exhaustively footnoted as such a piece should be.

Interestingly, and cunningly, the footnotes are where a good portion of the action actually takes place. Slowly we see the historian/author apparently going mad—or is he sane, and it's the system which is mad?—and ultimately finds himself in sort of the same predicament in which Smith is in at the conclusion. Not surprising, and not at all unsatisfying, though be aware that the pleasure you (and, indeed, I) might take at seeing the fall of Ingsoc isn't so much of a fall as it is a stumble into the waiting arms of Eurasia, which by all appearances is just as dark and sinister as was Oceania. Funny how that ends up, and funny too how our own world is so similar…Dalos in his own way is as prescient as was Orwell way back when.

I'm not quite sure exactly where I picked this piece up, though I want to say it was at the last of the fabulous Goodwill Book Sales they used to have at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. That would've been in 1991, I think, and yes, I kept this book all these years knowing I'd get around to reading it, figuring it looked too intriguing to be a dull read. Turns out I was right, and it seems others agree: thirty years after its publication you can still find copies of it. This is one that cries out to be transferred to e-reader format for a wider distribution. We can always learn from a work like this.

Not just a curiosity, 1985 is a genuine must-read for anyone who enjoyed the original work.

[Angelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

1985 is a great book, but in my opinion it's not a great sequel.
I mean, Orwell is such a literary giant, that no sequel to his book could ever be perfect. So, I'm willing to cut Dalos some slack. But still, there are a few issues, I want to address.
Firstly, I always assumed that Big Brother isn't a real person, or at best a propaganda figure based on one or more real people who died years, or even decades ago. And I also assumed that none of the Superpowers fight wars to win, but as a justification for all the other dicatorial crap they do. (Kind of like a certain real Superpower I'm not going to name.)
There are also some plot holes. Like where did all those intellectuals with their apparently deep knowledge of history, and the arts suddenly come from?
And worse, Dalos basically undoes the ending of 1984. This, combined with his decision to turn Winston and Julia from some random nobodies into two of the most important people in Oceania, makes 1985 almost anti-Orwellian in a way.
So, to make it work, my headcanon is that 1985 isn't really a sequel, but a story set in a similar world. And Winston, Julia, and the others aren't THE Winston, and THE Julia from Orwell's novel.
They're people with similar personalities who went through similar experiences.
It's not perfect, but it's good enough for me.
With that out of the way, 1985 is really good.
It's entertaining, the characters are believable, and, considering that Dalos wrote his book almost a decade before the fall of the Soviet Union, and even before Glasnost, the similarities to what would really happen a few years later are quite remarkable.
It's also interesting that Dalos foresaw the growing importance of Islam in Europe.
And I really like that he didn't just continue (the themes of) Orwell's novel, but instead focused on the early successes, the in-fighting, and the eventual collapse of a resistance movement that's really several loosely allied groups who can hardly agree on anything.
As anyone with experience in political activism will know, this is MUCH more realistic than so many other stories. (Star Wars, I'm looking at you.)
And lastly, some of the sci fi elements in 1985 are a bit silly, but I find the idea of guns that force people to smile pretty clever.

[Marilyn Saul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this in October, but had to set it aside because I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I'm glad I picked it up again. Told by five participants (in various ways) through letters, memoirs, opinions, they unfold the post-Big Brother/Big Sister regime of Oceania, the lightening of restrictions by the Inner Circle/Thought Police and the subsequent confusing (for some of them) limited liberties now allowed, the revolution against the Inner Circle/Thought Police, the counter-revolution by the Proles, and the subsequent outcome. The individual contributions are sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting, but always threads the lives of the five people (who are not all of one mind) together. The "Historian" compiling the letters, etc., supplies background for certain events and statements in his footnotes, which become increasingly subjective and personal as we find he hates his boss and decides to defect to Hong Kong. I can't say this was an "entertaining" book, but it is a suitable followup to 1984, and, sadly, seems to reflect much of what is going on today in our own government.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting idea for a sequel to Orwell's 1984, detailing the death of Big Brother and the collapse of the Oceanian state. Its structured in an interesting way; as a collection of historical documents brought together decades later. At times its interesting, though it does have the feeling of being constant exposition. The book suffers from a problem that many movie sequels have: all of the main characters from the first outing suddenly appearing together in the same place and being central figures in a new story. The book has some interesting ideas, in that it parallels the fall of the Soviet Union several years before it took place, especially the idea that the state allowing a small amount of openness (as Gorbachev did with 'glasnost' in the USSR in the 1980s) leads to a collapse of the system

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A follow-up to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four written in the form of historical documents as told from the perspective of an oppressed historian in the future beyond the fall of big brother. The book highlighted the idea that a populace raised within authoritarian and hierarchical systems seems doomed to repeat the history that they tried to escape from or change through revolution. Replacing one government for another regardless of how benevolent it makes itself appear, only squelches the light of freedom within people to organize their own affairs and makes them dependent on "leaders." In this case, through the fictional persona of a historian in the future, we witness the same kinds of apparatuses that were used by big brother to control the populace reused by the new free government of the future. It was a rather quick and interesting look at one possible future for 1984.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

1985: What Happens after Big Brother Dies is meant as a sort-of follow-up to George Orwell's classic 1949 novel 1984. While the original was a warning about the dangers of unchecked government control and historic revisionism, and a prescient look at the Soviet Union of the mid- to late-20th century, the sequel by Dalos, written in Hungary in 1983, is a look at what might happen when such a totalitarian regime begins to crumble. A good knowledge of Orwell's book is absolutely necessary, as Dalos makes reference to "past events" and characters from the book constantly. There is also a series of rather unfortunate footnotes that start out adding information useful to the reader, but end up becoming rants by the narrator against his superiors.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was crazy book. Told as a historical report from the future....footnotes and all....author uses these footnotes extreamly creativly and the fragmented nature of the documents to tell you many differnt aspects without having to show much background to bring them out.

This was better then I expected, although most of it is clearly a parallel with Big Brother Stallin, there are many other more subtle connections to historys and ideas....

I would defintitly recomend this book to anyone who has read 1984....but beware there are a couple of inconsistencys....don't let them totally discourage you.

[J. D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on George Orwell's "1984". A sequel recounting, in epistular form, the history following the death of Big Brother. The letters are written by the various characters from the original novel. This is a thought-provoking social satire.