We
We by Yevgeny Zamyati was written in the early 1920s. The book and the author was attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. Zamyati ended up leaving Russia, dying in Paris in the late 30s. The book was a Christmas present from Erica. She found it on a shelf of bookseller recommendations. The billing as a seminal and influential work of science fiction sold her. It’s prescient in the way Trump had so many of saying Parable of the Sower is prescient.
It’s a political novel. The abandonment of the soul for the all knowing regimentation of the state. It is warning of the dangerous future ahead. The one person who discovers a core, a soul that makes him different. The conflict at all levels that creates. You can see Metropolis — which is broadly contemporary, 1984, of course, and the mass weddings and cults of the late 70s. It is a fantastic read an feels so weird with the new version of the Russian state playing out in front of us now.
Other perspectives:
1. From George Orwell
2. Masha Gessen for the New Yorker
Logistics: I read the mass market paperback copy — my favorite format for any science fiction novel — in bed. It went slow. Sometimes only a page before falling asleep, sometimes rereading what I’d read the day before. And then it went all at once, finishing it on the front sofa, not even music playing. Book 11 finished 18 March.