Hi, @agmoore
Your comments on these dystopian books and the utopian reference by the priest Thomas Moros are very interesting. Honestly, I only remember fully reading Moros's Utopia about two decades ago when I was in graduate school. I started reading Brave New World when I was a teenager. So I couldn't give a solid opinion today, nor could I offer a consistent opinion on George Orwell's 1984. Both are on my rereading to-do list. By the way, it's a long list, and it grows every day. Ha ha ha.
Now I'll add "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
On the other hand, you'd have to ask yourself what these authors have in common. I stopped believing in fortuitous coincidences a long time ago. They all drew from the same source. Some consciously, others not (although I doubt it). Social engineering. Forgive me if I become somewhat conspiratorial; nothing to do with the Fabian Society.
Well, let's leave our imaginations alone and read more.
Greetings.
That's an interesting comment and sent me scurrying to find out more about the authors' politics.
Zamyatin I know: He certainly was not a Fabian :) He lived in Soviet Russia after the Revolution. He had himself revolted against the Czar. However, he was dismayed by the suppression of freedom he witnessed under the Bolsheviks. His book was banned in his own country until 1988 because of his politics. So... he didn' have a lot in common with the other three authors.
As for Ray Bradbury...he was a Republican, leaning toward libertarian. Voted conservative, not socialist or even left.
Huxley it seems was briefly a Fabian and then fell away from that group. He followed more the philosophy of Bertrand Russell (who had also broken from the Fabians). Huxley was interested in Easter Philosophy and was inspire by Ghandi.
It seems, from my reading, that Orwell was a socialist who decried the gradualism of the Fabians. He wanted active change , a democratic socialist revolution (though not a heads-on-the-spike) revolution.. He doesn't seem to have anything in common with the other three authors, except his disdain for totalitarian government.
Thanks for reading and for commenting thoughtfully. As you can see, I do like to look stuff up. My formal education is in history, literature and the humanities so I am inclined to look for answers :))
Thank you for the clarification, my esteemed professor. You are quite right.
In my opinion, Moros, Huxley, and Orwell (Anglo-Saxons) and Zamyatin (Russian-Slavic) converge in their reflections on power, society, and the individual; they share an ethical concern for human destiny in the face of oppressive systems. In such a way, they profoundly influenced the utopian and dystopian literature very present in science fiction.
Perhaps, indirectly, they drank from the same river (Judeo-Christian ideas) and curiously adopted positions of optimism on the one hand and of naive criticism
to scathing criticism on the other, from the perspective of the fervent theist, the pacifist mystic, the agnostic, and the rationalist atheist. Impressive in every way.
I loved your review and the conversation in this thread.
Heavens no. I'm a dilettante. I look stuff up because I like it. It's relaxing for me, an escape. I really appreciate your comment on the review because now I know stuff I didn't know before. That's what's great about Hive. Different people, different interests, different parts of the world. We come together and 'talk'. Nobody I know in my physical existence wants to have a conversation about dystopian literature :)) Here I can 'discuss' it and someone somewhere might be interested.
Thanks for your feedback, again.