Tag Archives: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Brave New World

In every literary genre (in every type of art, really), there are classics that stand out and often participate in forming the language, or at least some of the territory, of the genre. That is part of what makes these works classics. (Lord of the Rings is an ultimate classic — all Medieval fantasy since is in reference to it.)

I suspect all serious readers have a classic or two they’ve never gotten around to. Last week I finally got around to reading the classic science fiction novel, Brave New World (1932), by Aldous Huxley.

For a novel written 88 years ago, it’s surprisingly prescient and relevant.

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2020 Vision

So. 2020. The start of a new decade. That’s just a bit surreal for me. I can remember wondering if 1984 would turn out anything like the novel. The future did turn out a bit like Orwell’s vision — it just took until 2016 or so to get there. It isn’t so much that Big Brother is watching (although, that too), but how our government corrupts and perverts facts and truth.

Good fiction is insightful about the human condition; good science fiction is insightful about our future. Over time, as advertised, the prescient film Idiocracy goes from SF comedy to anthropological documentary. Many others went from fiction to fact. (Fortunately, at least so far, The Terminator has not.)

Suffice to say, this year will seem surreal in more ways than one.

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Bitter Irony

One of my very early posts here (God is an Iron) was about irony. It featured a pretty decent definition of the word by the dear departed, and much missed, George Carlin: “Irony is ‘a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result.’”

The POTUS Putin America First…

It’s a good definition to keep in mind when considering how, for so long, a key gun rights Second Amendment argument is the vital importance of being able to stand up to a corrupt, tyrannical government…

Yet most of those folks seem to be supporting the current regime…

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