There are similarities between 1984 and Atlas Shrugged, but some big differences too. I like them both but Ayn Rand's work seems more fantastical. Orwell's seem

There are similarities between 1984 and Atlas Shrugged, but some big differences too. I like them both but Ayn Rand's work seems more fantastical. Orwell's seems closer to reality in some fundamental way. Her heros are more unreal, like demigods. Having those perfect heros makes the parody less poignant. I do think hers is a valuable parody as well. The cowardly, opportunistic looters are probably more realistic than Orwell's unbeatable bad guys. The heads-I-win-tails-you-lose dynamic she describes is very good. She messes up (IMO) is in dividing the people into innate types. Also in her description of where this will all eventually lead. When the hero's escape to build their own society the other heros it looks like an extension of the heros' (shared) personality. The looter society left behind (now without heros to support it) devolves and regresses, cannibalizing then living in the ruins of the once great civilization. That doesn't feel all that convincing in the book^. Even though Rand describes the process and Orwell describes the result, his (mostly inferred) process seems more realistic. His dystopian society resembled actual history more than either of her societies, and feels more like a stable state. I think it all comes back to more realistic portrayal of humans. Orwell seemed to undertand how humans work. The characters are products of their circumstances within their society. It feels realistic. More similar to the people you know. They can be moulded. They can be broken. The John Galts in Atlas Shrugged are real. In Orwell's world they exist as stories, like they do in ours. ^There are lots of example in the world and all through history of similar looking scenes. EG, medieval societies in the ruines of Roman cities washing in rivers that once fed aqueducts. These have inspired variations of The Great Fall stories for thousands of years(Planet of The Apes!).