We is the classic dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. One thousand years after the One State's conquest of the entire world and the start of a New World Order, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. The story is told through the eyes of the project's chief engineer, D-503. This book is generally considered to be the grandfather of the satirical futuristic sci-fi dystopia genre and is often favorably compared to George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New ...
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We is the classic dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. One thousand years after the One State's conquest of the entire world and the start of a New World Order, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. The story is told through the eyes of the project's chief engineer, D-503. This book is generally considered to be the grandfather of the satirical futuristic sci-fi dystopia genre and is often favorably compared to George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of modern industrial society to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizens' lives should be controlled with mathematical precision by the state.
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Add this copy of We to cart. $7.99, good condition, Sold by HPB-Red rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Important Books.
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Add this copy of We to cart. $37.08, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Important Books.
This dystopian book is similar in many ways to Nineteen Eighty-Four, but was written over twenty years earlier in bolshevik Russia. Zamyatin perceives a future in which a tiny number of survivors on Earth live in the domed city of the "One State", where their every action is regulated to the last chew of their food.
Protagonist and narrator D-503 is writing a series of notes to the 'aliens' intended to be contacted via the Integral (basically, a spaceship) that he is in charge of building. The plan is to convert even extra-terrestials to the peace and solidarity of the One State. But when D-503 encounters the heretical and elusive I-330, both his life and the narrative start to run off the rails.
Zamyatin tentatively explores conformity, both in the in 'top-down' dictatorship from the Benefactor and in the pressure of the citizens' peers. Every wall in the One State is glass; every action (except sex) is open to view. This lack of privacy is similar to Orwell's ubiquitous viewscreens, except that here, there is literally no corner in which to hide.
Sadly, D-503 proves to be no hero.
This translation is readable and the story moves along at a reasonable pace. The book is only short, especially when compared to Orwell's lengthy tome. Definitely worth reading both in order to make a comparison, and it was instructive to see where Orwell may have got some of his ideas.
