Tag: dystopian fiction

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Marx 101

Here we get John Galt’s speech — albeit of a very different type — in miniature. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

The celebrated American writer Jack London is best known for stories of adventure such as White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and “To Build a Fire” — the last being a chilling tale, indeed. Some of his writings were informed by his political views, a synthesis which is quite rare nowadays. London made an early contribution to dystopian literature with The Iron Heel, a novel about the formation of the leviathan state. Written in 1907, it precedes the more famous works by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and even Yevgeny Zamyatin. Since it’s explicitly revolutionary and socialism features heavily in it, it’s hardly surprising that it is the author’s pinkest novel. Still, don’t let that deter you. (more…)

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By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter — one book. This was the book of the Machine. – E. M. Forster

Welcome, my son.
Welcome to the machine.
— Pink Floyd

Writers of fiction are obviously not bound to set their work in their own times. (more…)

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Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. — George Orwell, 1984

American college students have said, ‘Like 1984, man’, when asked not to smoke pot in the classroom or advised gently to do a little reading. — Anthony Burgess, 1985

I made a half-hearted New Year’s resolution not to mention Orwell’s 1984 this year, not once. Like most of these Janus-faced pledges, however, it didn’t last long. But hasn’t the book been over-visited? (more…)

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“There is nothing one can do against those who approach. Except run . . .” So begins, not Septentrion the novel, but Septentrion the blog page. It is with this quote — a quote by himself — that Jean Raspail begins his personal blog page dedicated to his own work, a novel from 1979, recently translated into English, for the first time, after nearly 45 years. That quote is quickly followed by this one: “Death is our deepest memory . . .”, from Ernst Jünger.

What to say about Septentrion the novel without giving away the story? One will have to speak in luminous abstractions, poetic bounds, quotes, and thick or thin riddles unless . . . (more…)

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Though he has a dedicated fan base from Twitter, Zero HP Lovecraft’s (ZHPL) long-form writing allows us to experience his words beyond a mere 280 characters. This is not to suggest that the extreme short form doesn’t have its merits, but for those who need more, ZHPL’s stories have a profound delivery. (more…)

Winston & Julia, 1984

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Love is best. — last line of Robert Browning’s “Love among the Ruins”

He loved Big Brother. — last line of George Orwell’s 1984 (more…)

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Anthony Burgess
1985
London: Hutchinson, 1978

Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame celebrated thirty years of Nineteen Eighty-Four with his 1985. It is in two parts: a discussion of Orwell and freedom, and a novella updating Winston Smith’s struggle. (more…)

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How do you break into Hollywood? Director Grant Sputore and writer Michael Lloyd Green might have a few tips for you in their first full-length feature film for Netflix. Released in 2019, their debut, I am Mother, does all it can to please the Hollywood elite and bring a warm glow of smug satisfaction into the bleeding hearts of their old college professors.

It takes a man to write a great feminist movie, and with their all-female cast, these two guys lay it on twice as thick. (more…)

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Ash Donaldson’s novel From Her Eyes a Doctrine accomplishes several striking things which make it stand out among dissident literature. For one, it does what all novels should do: It tells an entertaining story – although in this case, we have multiple stories, some new, some old, some present, some past. A few of these stories are discrete; others are dropped off and revisited later. (more…)

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The third season of The Handmaid’s Tale is well-crafted in almost every way. The cinematography is outstanding. The dialogue is good. The acting is excellent. Its fictional universe is interesting, and it has a dark, dystopian beauty to it. However, the season doesn’t hang together. I got quite bored with it and stopped watching after getting enough information to scrape together a review. (I know what happens in the rest because I cheated and read the plot summaries after watching two-thirds of the season.)

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June 8th is the 70th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Greg Johnson interviews Margot Metroland on some of Orwell’s sources and influences, the loosely “Trotskyite” political context in which he wrote, and the possibility that he was bumped off by Stalinists. (more…)