2 ms·
Heh well I'm sure some fiction authors do, but point taken! I meant, however, things that might have seemed absurd to readers and critics at the time, many of w
by devindotcom 9y ago
Heh well I'm sure some fiction authors do, but point taken! I meant, however, things that might have seemed absurd to readers and critics at the time, many of whom would dismiss the possibility of a state regressing in the way the book imagines, or in 1984 people voluntarily submitting to intrusive surveillance, or in BNW eugenics becoming an everyday practice.
- pvg 9y agoI meant, however, things that might have seemed absurd to readers and critics at the time Right. I meant this is almost certainly wrong. It's both weirdly self-centered (why don't we think these things absurd? In what way were people in 1948 or 1985 so different and clueless) and ahistorical. The eugenics movement was in its heyday when Brave New World was written, the (not-at-all-voluntary) surveillance in 1984 could have hardly seemed such a stretch right around the peak of atrocities performed by states. The Islamic Revolution in Iran took place only a couple of years before Atwood started working on the Handmaid's Tale. And so on.