I always liked this review because it reads like a diff between _That Hideous Strength_ and _1984_ (not yet written). I like the book itself as a sort of spirit

I always liked this review because it reads like a diff between _That Hideous Strength_ and _1984_ (not yet written). I like the book itself as a sort of spiritual prequel. If 1984 is the dystopia realized, THS is the dystopia as it is born. It's an interesting work. It's flawed, as Orwell notes, but it stands at the crossroads between the prewar and postwar worlds, at the very beginning, perhaps, of what we would recognize as Modernity. To the best of my knowledge, it is the last work of pre-atomic sci-fi. The work itself is as transitional as the time period. In more concrete terms, it provides a frame on the notion of Progress, and how easily Progress (and those in charge of calling their work Progress) can turn a blind eye to the merits of what is being replaced, with contemptuous disdain for those it leaves behind. (Today we may be more likely to call this sort of thing "Disruption," and while there are real differences in the dynamic, there are similarities too.) Finally, there's just one small piece of very good advice I extracted from an incidental note in the first chapter — if you write a letter to a committee of some sort, complaining, it will be much stronger and go over better if you limit yourself to a single complaint.