The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

It's about time this group reads this novel. We've read several terrific classics that influenced not only the field of speculative fiction, but also literature and popular culture, but somehow missed one of the most famous. This is the one that is the source of the meme "Big Brother" and is one of the earliest that those people who don't read SF do actually read anyway.

The group members chose two books to read this December, so read either this or the other or both, and join what promises to be two rich discussions!
George Orwell 1984.

I've read the French translation around 25 years ago. Now I'm at 20% of the original English version. I love it.

People often compare the current surveillance capitalism with 1984's surveillance state. Even if there are similarities, there are differences. Scary ones.

Winston's job wouldn't exist with surveillance capitalism. Or he wouldn't be qualified for it. Now, or soon, algorithms would do the job. That is frightning because AIs do not show mercy or have independent critical thoughts.

Some "heretical" books survived the Inquisition because censors were people who didn't always agree with their task. Algorithms do have that such scruples.

Reading it also makes me want to re-read We right after. To see how much of an influence it was on Orwell.

This is one of the most frightening books I have ever read-because I see our reality starting to resemble the society in this book.

I've got an audio edition of this that I'm going to start today.

I started listening to this & found it intriguing from the first line.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
A famous line (infamous?) which lets me know we're not in my world any more. I use military time on about half my clocks, but I've never heard one strike 13.

Victory Mansions reminds me of a poor tenement immediately. Not only is grit flying about in the air, but the hallway smells of boiled cabbage, a description I equate with poverty, too many people, & poor hygiene. Poor Winston has a 7th floor walk-up with no electric, so it's really a shock that no damage or graffiti is mentioned on the posters. I'd expect it.

'The black moustachio'd face' evokes either Hitler or Stalin, but I'm assuming the latter since Orwell was a socialist who was really hurt by Stalin's actions. The tyranny of monarchy was bad & any change seemed to be for the better, but it was actually worse. I wonder how much they knew of Stalin's purges & policies that killed millions back in 1948? I guess they knew things were bad, but did they know just how bad?

Jim wrote: "... it's really a shock that no damage or graffiti is mentioned on the posters. I'd expect it. ..."

I guess the idea is that with cameras everywhere, people would be too afraid to commit such vandalism.

I recently read the non-fiction The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance. It traces the idea of "panopticon" that Orwell was also thinking about. Jeremy Bentham's idea was that if anyone could be observed at any time without being aware of whether they were actually being observed at that time, then they would behave as if they were always observed. In real life, it doesn't seem to work out that way. People find ways to rebel.

I read this book in the year 1984. (I was also enjoying the Eurythmics album 1984 and Bowie's Diamond Dogs, which started as an idea for a musical version of 1984.) It will be interesting to see how my thoughts about the book have changed since then.

Surveillance in the USA has evolved in very different ways, with private corporations doing most of the snooping. I'm not so sure about the situation in England where video cameras seem to be everywhere. The currently closest thing to what Orwell imagined is probably China.

Ed wrote: "I guess the idea is that with cameras everywhere, people would be too afraid to comm..."

Agreed, but we don't know that when the hallway is described, so it becomes a revelation. He did a great job of setup.

Interesting about the surveillance & how people act. I've read some articles about people in England wearing masks & face paint now to stymie facial recognition. I think you're right about China. Mao lacked the mustache, though.

Ed wrote: "Jim wrote: "... it's really a shock that no damage or graffiti is mentioned on the posters. I'd expect it. ..."

I guess the idea is that with cameras everywhere, people would be too afraid to comm..."

The 1984 movie of Nineteen eighty-four is very well done.

Also, in Velvet Goldmine, the 80s settings are modeled on Orwell due to the film being a retelling of glam rock and the glam rockers, and might be as close to Bowie's thoughts on 1984 as we will ever see. If Bowie had cooperated with the director, he might have made his musical at least abstractly.

The description of the movie was disgusting & overdone. I find it hard to believe anyone could think that killing refugee children was entertaining. The 2 minute Hate is a revolting example of mob psychology. Goldstein is another name for Trotsky who was also a Jew.

I had to stop the book for a while to contemplate the idea of not knowing the year. It's a really chilling idea living always in the present without any history. Later this is messed up by Winston's job as he does his bit to rewrite history. That's even more messed up & makes me worry about our electronic media. It's so easily & invisibly changed. Thankfully we still have private printed texts & places like Archive.org's Wayback Machine which takes snapshots of web pages so we can back check. I wonder how many do?

A lot of the feel of the book up to now makes me think of today's fake news & the way so many things are spun. I don't want to get into today's politics, but it is very hard to know who, if anyone, is telling how much of the truth, what is being left out, & what is being spun. Worse, the idea that "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" has been taken up by quite a few people & movements.

When I was teaching history and social studies to 13 and 14 year olds, I was surprised when a student showed interest in history. They were in the distinct minority.
More kids asked me why they had to study history.
1984 shows what happens to a society where people are programmed not to know or care about anything independently. That's why I find it scary. The others are depersonalized.

Currently, the fastest collapsing major at American universities is history.

Think on that....

Jim wrote: "The description of the movie was disgusting & overdone. I find it hard to believe anyone could think that killing refugee children was entertaining. The 2 minute Hate is a revolting example of mob ..."

I had forgotten about the Trotsky reference....

I really liked the film:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninetee...

Jim wrote: "The description of the movie was disgusting & overdone. ..."

To be clear, Jim seems to be referring to the movie described in the book, not the movie made from the book. I was confused for a minute.

Ed wrote: "Jim wrote: "The description of the movie was disgusting & overdone. ..."

To be clear, Jim seems to be referring to the movie described in the book, not the movie made from the book. I was confused..."

Thank you. I wasn't sure yet, myself.

I've not yet started this. Interestingly, for another group I have to make time to reread Orwell's Animal Farm this month.

And let us not forget the brilliance of Brazil:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_...

I have been pondering the reading of Animal Farm again for last couple of years....

Join us! (It's short!) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Jim wrote: "The description of the movie was disgusting & overdone. I find it hard to believe anyone could think that killing refugee children was entertaining. The 2 minute Hate is a revolting example of mob ..."

I can't help think about Pol Pot using children to denounce adults during the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. Imagine the level of hatred or "patriotism" to just randomly denounce and kill an immense portion of the population.

According to Wikipedia Orwell felt everybody did this during WWI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Min...

Which is a bit terrifying....

Sorry for being unclear, but I was discussing the movie that Winston is remembering as he writes the first entry in his diary. I don't think I've ever seen the movie all the way through. Too depressing.

That Wiki article on the 2 minute hate is interesting & contains the relevant sentences, The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary... Awful mob psychology. Winston finds himself screaming right along with the rest while part of his mind is doubting.

Jim wrote: "The descrption of the movie was disgusting & overdone. I find it hard to believe anyone could think that killing refugee children was entertaining."

There are plenty of people who applaud when the US drops a bomb on people in the Middle East, and there is plenty of death porn on the internet.

For many, other humans do not register as human.

Rosemarie wrote: "When I was teaching history and social studies to 13 and 14 year olds, I was surprised when a student showed interest in history. They were in the distinct minority.
More kids asked me why they had..."

That's sad, but I remember feeling the same way. I had a good teacher named Evans who got me hooked early, though. He did a lot of things like comparing current events that actually meant something to us with historical precedents &, best of all, he thought historical fiction was worth reading. I had some books by Harold Lamb such as Omar Khayyam from my father. Evans was happy to discuss them.

He also didn't insist on rote memorization of specific dates which I was never good at & always detested. Instead, he went over the broader context of what was happening in the world, showing the forces that shaped the times & the reactions. It made way more sense & made it interesting.

Gregg wrote: "I can't help think about Pol Pot using children to denounce adults during the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. Imagine the level of hatred or "patriotism" to just randomly denounce and kill an immense portion of the population...."

Kids often have very little empathy. IIRC, Pot, like the genocides in Rawanda, used kids as young as 10 for soldiers. The kids had to go to school, but were mostly taught doctrine & most were illiterate by the time they graduated. They were cannon fodder, a weapon of terror. Stalin & Hitler had similar youth organizations. As different as the basic ideologies were, the methods were almost identical, but they focused on kids from 10 or so & up. They did encourage younger kids, but Hitler wasn't around long enough, thankfully.

I find Stalin & Orwell's vision far more chilling. The idea that parents had to raise little spies without a sense of family is just so grotesque & it really hits home. It's tough raising the little boogers & school plays an incredibly important & influential role in their lives. I spent a lot of time going over what they were learning in school. Sometimes it was incredibly wrong. History was often a garbled PC/party line mess, but even math could be messed up such as when they decided my first grader should use a calculator.

They decided 1st graders shouldn't have to learn that 2+2=4, but how to set up problems. Ridiculous! After several notes, two conferences, & a calculator being returned in pieces, I had to sit through every math problem that he did that year which created a lot of resentment. He's the worst one in the family at math, but he was the only one who could pass the simple math tests in his 5th grade class when they realized just how badly they'd screwed up. This is minor compared to what Orwell shows & yet I found it so incredibly frustrating & far reaching.

Jim, it sounds like you had a great teacher. I have always been interested in history and it's chilling when we see current events mirroring the worst parts of past history.
In 1984, Big Brother reminds me of Stalin. The true history of that period didn't come to light until well after his death.
The fact that children in 1984 were told to denounce parents and other adults reminds me in a bizarre sort of way to the Bradbury short story The Veldt. The children in that story had too much power as well.

Marc-André wrote: "There are plenty of people who applaud when the US drops a bomb on people in the Middle East, and there is plenty of death porn on the internet..."

You're point is well taken, although I don't know why you single out the US. The same sort applaud when anyone does it, just a different crowd. There are a lot of idiots & terrorists in the world, but I doubt even they applaud a boat load of young kids being blown up with a slow shot of a kid's arm arcing across the sky. Most see blown up buildings, possibly soldiers/terrorist men, but not in detail. The stories with women & kids in them are against the killing, not for it.

Cheryl wrote: "Join us! (It's short!) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..."

I might join in later in the month. I haven't read it in far too long, either.

Marc-André wrote: "...For many, other humans do not register as human. "

No, they don't. A gal was telling me the other day how nasty immigrants were & why we should build a big wall quickly. I was surprised by how certain & vehement she was since she often talks about charity & how Jesus loves her.

I asked her how bad conditions would have to be at home & how good the other place would have to be before she would pack up her family & move to another country where she didn't speak the language. She was completely flummoxed. She finally stalked away saying the idea was ridiculous.

Wow.

"Jim wrote: "The descrption of the movie was disgusting & overdone. I find it hard to believe anyone could think that killing refugee children was entertaining."

I find that unfortunately easy to believe. There have been people in the USA recently cheerfully suggesting shooting refugees at our southern border, as well as bombing people in other places.

I think that one of the uses of fiction is to open peoples minds to see things from other peoples point of view. I certainly know it has helped me in that way. You have to be willing to sometimes read outside your comfort zone, though.

SF can help by using imaginary races and imaginary conflicts that we don't already have opinions about.

One of the threads running through the book is the alienation of the old days to the new by the adoption of the metric system & similar changes. It starts with the clock striking 13, what I call military time. Later, when Winston & Julia get the room, the 12 hour clock is mentioned as ridiculous.

Money has changed from using the pound to the dollar & the old man complains that he can't get a pint any more, but has to get a liter. His complaints are shown to be just griping - he sucks it down fast.

Here in the US we've been messing around with changing to the metric system for most of my life & still haven't managed it. Most of the stuff we import (& we import a LOT) is in metric sizes & quantities, but many people are dead set against it. It's made a real mess of things. For instance, soda comes in liters, but milk & gas are in gallons. Lumber is sold in SAE units, but all manufactured wood (plywood, etc.) are actually metric sizes.

Our military uses the metric system. After a few years of service, klicks & cm are easy to use. Then you go back to the World & mess around with both systems again. The metric never really goes away, but it's never really kicked in for me, either. It's frustrating & I guess Orwell was really on to something here.

Jim wrote: "One of the threads running through the book is the alienation of the old days to the new by the adoption of the metric system & similar changes. It starts with the clock striking 13, what I call mi..."

The pint debate was a central complaint during the EU unification. You can bet it was raised during Brexit campaign in the UK.

Change. It scares people.

Marc-André wrote: "Change. It scares people."

You're right, it does. I think changing measurement systems is in the 'Really Scary' category & people don't even realize it consciously. Intellectually, the idea of changing from the mile to the klick seems minor, but there's a gut wrenching aspect to it.

I didn't know that, Gregg. Yeah, I can see that being a thing. Orwell made the point well, too.

Throughout the book, I'm impressed by how well Orwell sets the stage. It's little things that lead the story logically along. Winston finds the journal & shop, visits again, sees the room, & it becomes the obvious place for their trysts. There's an inevitability about it that's impressive.

I really liked the tidbit of Winston being sickly until he gets together with Julia. It really adds to the air of depression at the start & heightens the tension. It's just plain good writing.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.
—Adolf Hitler

I started it today and I see a heavy influence of the author's experience in Spain during the Civil War. Goldstain is definitely a not very disguised version of Leo Trotsky (Bernstain), up to the spectacles and goatee. In Spain Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM were labeled Trotskists even despite at the time the party parted ways with him.

Jim wrote: "'The black moustachio'd face' evokes either Hitler or Stalin, but I'm assuming the latter since Orwell was a socialist who was really hurt by Stalin's actions"

Definitely Stalin, the later story of B.B. shows it - appearing from second roles and destroying opponents. Orwell was well aware of the purges: when Soviet 'specialists' started purges in Spain in 1936-8 he was right in the middle. I recommend his memoirs, Homage to Catalonia and The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 as complimentary sources

Jim wrote: "it's really a shock that no damage or graffiti is mentioned on the posters. I'd expect it."

There weren't graffiti in the USSR during Stalin's reign. People were taken even for 'wrong' pictures like printing errors and you talk about besmearing the glorious image! :)

About erasing history. Here are several examples of people 'disappearing on photos during Stalin's reign (text in Russian but it's photos that matter): https://cameralabs.org/11680-sovetski...

Jim wrote: "The idea that parents had to raise little spies without a sense of family is just so grotesque & it really hits home. "

It is quite clear reference to Pavlik Morozov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_... ) who was as now say a forced meme for Soviet Youth (my local library was named after him, like many other children libraries)

Oleksandr wrote: "About erasing history. Here are several examples of people 'disappearing on photos during Stalin's reign (text in Russian but it's photos that matter): https://cameralabs.org/11680-sovetski......"

Those photos really bring the truth home. Incredible!

Great to read your comments, Oleksandr. I thought you'd know more about this than I. Is the Party balance about right? 15% in the Party, 85% just proles?

Jim wrote: " Is the Party balance about right? 15% in the Party, 85% just proles?"

Yes, about right, maybe even smaller part's % in the 30s. Ofc it is important to recall that the history isn't monolithic, e.g. during the WW2 there was a surge of new party members (different reasons - from greater possible protection and career growth to idealistic ones)

That's understood. I was just curious as to how closely Orwell was following actual history. I'd guess the number varied a lot in the various satellite states, too.

I'm listening to an essay by Christopher Hitchens about Orwell & he mentions that Pavlik Morozov was an inspiration for a bit of 1984. Apparently Pavlik was a 13 year old boy who turned in his family for forging documents or hoarding grain & was killed for it in 1932. He became an icon, martyr, & example for Soviet children after that. There were statues made of him. Pretty disgusting story & idea.

Jim wrote: "Pavlik Morozov was an inspiration for a bit of 1984. Apparently Pavlik was a 13 year ..."

Yes, I mentioned him above :) msg 37

I missed that, Olksandr. Well, Hitchens caught me up. His description was better than the Wikipedia article. It's just part of his essay about Orwell's List. That delves more into Orwell's thinking at the time.

I'm fascinated how a fictional rendering of Russia under Stalin became such an universal and intemporal story. We compare our day and age with 1984, but our reality has nothing to do with stalinism.

I posted my 5 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Marc-André wrote: "I'm fascinated how a fictional rendering of Russia under Stalin became such an universal and intemporal story. "

Not Russia but the Soviet Union. And while definitely the main source is the USSR, it is more (almost archetypal) totalitarian state, just like B.B. is more an amalgamation and not only Stalin. It was a wise snippet by Andrzej Sapkowski "the first half of the XX century - the time of mustached dictators" (pointing on Józef Piłsudski among others)

Jim wrote: "... I don't think I've ever seen the movie all the way through. Too depressing ..."

I'm curious why you find the film too depressing, but not the audio-book. The film is probably shorter than the audio, but maybe visual information affects you more strongly?

I'm not sure. IIRC, it's the whole mood. B&W maybe? It's been a long time. I just remember it as very bleak. I'll try to take a look at it soon.

It is bleak, but so is the book! It is not black-and-white but does use a "bleach bypass" process to make the colors muted. The director wanted it to look like a film made in 1948.