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Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

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Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#61

Post by globular-toast »

harry8 wrote: post #47
melagonster wrote: post #38

>Nor did he foresee any difference in the role of women or any weakening of the feminine stereotype of 1949. This is funny for me. The most common type of criticize for Asimov's work is that people complain Asimov did not add enough women in his book. The world is changing so quickly.

I enjoyed reading "Foundation" recently. The total lack of female characters was jarring to say the least. Worth the read if you haven't. Not much like the AppleTV series.

You can't just stop with the first book. Keep reading...

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#62

Post by int0x29 »

Animats wrote: post #43

Asimov in 1980 didn't have access to "Orwell, the Lost Writings", published in 1985. That details Eric Blair's ("Orwell" is a pseudonym) jobs during WWII, mostly at the British Ministry of Information. "1984"'s details are partly autobiographical. One of Blair's jobs was to translate news broadcasts into Basic English for broadcast to the colonies, primarily India and Hong Kong. He found that this was a political act…

Room 101 is the conference room where he sat through tedious meetings while working for the BBC.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#63

Post by kergonath »

janwillemb wrote: post #44
ninalanyon wrote: post #4

I wonder what Asimov would write if he were to re-do that review now? Now that we actually do have televisions that can hear us as well as show us ads and in which governments of every nominal political stripe are falling over themselves in the rush to buy Palantir's products and to inject monitoring software into every mobile phone and 3D printer.

His point is that the Orwellian way of surveillance is impossible to do in practice, and that a proper science fiction writer would have left the surveillance to machines. So I think his critique is about the art of SF writing, not about the prediction of surveillance itself.

That’s just gate keeping. How hard does science fiction have to be in order to be considered worthwhile? Why does it matter?

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#64

Post by tehnub »

kergonath wrote: post #14

I have a lot of respect for Asimov, but he is more than a bit myopic here. He absolutely wants 1984 to be anti-Stalinist and he misses the fact that all dictatorships use the same playbook, and that there is nothing intrinsically Stalinist in the tools and methods used by Ingsoc. Far-right fascist wannabes are doing exactly the same thing right now. Amusingly, when he writes > Furthermore, he has a system of voluntee…

I think Asimov is right that 1984 was not intended as a forecast but rather a depiction of Stalinism with British characteristics, so to speak.

>In short, if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction.

Based on this quote and others, it seems Asimov didn't believe that Orwell intended the novel as science fiction, although others categorize it that way. I would say he's attacking the interpretation of it as science fiction, but it veers into an attack on Orwell, which is unfortunate.

You write

>Science fiction does not _forecast_.

Not to be overly pedantic but to be fair to Asimov, he didn't exactly say science fiction _necessarily_ does that, but rather it's a knack related to science fiction.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#66

Post by riffraff »

zhoujing204 wrote: post #59
hleszek wrote: post #8

This is still so relevant now: > This Orwellian preoccupation with the minutiae of 'historical proof' is typical of the political sectarian who is always quoting what has been said and done in the past to prove a point to someone on the other side who is always quoting something to the opposite effect that has been said and done. As any politician knows, no evidence of any kind is ever required. It is only necessary…

Dictators are absolutely terrified of the paper trail. This is the entire reason for existence of the Great Firewall. The CCP invests heavily in sanitizing imported literature and curating the information supply to maintain cognitive capture over the populace. We are seeing parallel mechanics from the Trump/GOP camp: look at the library purges in conservative states and the push to co-opt moderation on platforms like…

But Trump and his administration also prove what GP is saying. Few care about the truth.

Trump states obvious lies so blatant ("prices will go down 200%") that anyone who cares could tell they are untruth without needing to look up any paper trail, but it does not matter.

Mike Johnson just quoted St Paul as saying you should respect the authority forgetting that the Romans beheaded him. And it's not like the Bible isn't available widely.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#67

Post by kikokikokiko »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #31
riazrizvi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant because it's universal human nature, to only have domain over a narrow context in life, and assert what's good/bad based on that limited view with others who occupy a different one. We use justifications which make sense to us that others rightly disagree with. It's not left politics, it's not right politics, it's not just politics, it's everything. Anyone who asserts they are beyond it are full of it.

Orwell and Asimov are talking about something entirely different than drawing flawed conclusions due to inexperience—they’re talking about people with access to the facts and choosing not to believe them. For instance, Alex Pretti’s murder was recorded from several angles and yet the American right still broadly claims that he attacked the agents, that he pulled his gun on them, etc. You don’t need to be an expert in…

These Minessota videos are classic examples of what Scott Adams used to call "two different movies being played on the same screen", in this case quite literally. From the point of view of a left leaning person, that movie shows a man being assassinated for no reason at all, nothing justify what happened. From the point of view of a right leaning person, Alex Pretti was actively interfering with law enforcement, and he entered a conflict situation while carrying a gun. If a cop is in the act of fighting you, and see a gun, you carry the risk of being shot, it's just reality. The right leaning person, just based on these facts, already reduces the charges from murder to manslaughter, max. Two movies on one screen, and there's NOTHING rational that can be said to change the mind of anyone. Everybody is watching the same damn screen, but the movies are completely different.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#68

Post by ses1984 »

mulmen wrote: post #57
ses1984 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is of course a huge difference between left and right, but the democratic party is actually center-right, so... Previous poster didn't say there's no difference between left and right, they said both parties are bought and paid for by fascists, which is pretty much true, thanks to Citizens United v FEC which passed the last time democrats had control of Congress and the presidency. Congress could have responded…

This is one of those times where technically correct isn’t the best kind of correct. Ok yeah fine there are fascists in both parties. Now that we have that out of the way where are we? Oh, right. The same fucking place. Stop wasting everyone’s time with the soft apologetics. We have a system that moves slowly at a national level by design . One party is hellbent on tearing that down in favor of literal (techno-)fasci…

Did you make it all the way to the end of my post...?

I promise I am just as mad as you are about everything republicans are doing right now.

The problem is that when one party is hellbent on literal fascism, the opposition needs to be a little bit stronger than incremental refinement.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#69

Post by mulmen »

ses1984 wrote: post #68
mulmen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those times where technically correct isn’t the best kind of correct. Ok yeah fine there are fascists in both parties. Now that we have that out of the way where are we? Oh, right. The same fucking place. Stop wasting everyone’s time with the soft apologetics. We have a system that moves slowly at a national level by design . One party is hellbent on tearing that down in favor of literal (techno-)fasci…

Did you make it all the way to the end of my post...? I promise I am just as mad as you are about everything republicans are doing right now. The problem is that when one party is hellbent on literal fascism, the opposition needs to be a little bit stronger than incremental refinement.

We don’t need incremental refinement now because we are facing an existential threat. The long term promise is a stable democracy. That’s the whole experiment.

We need to hold our noses on the Democrats’ historical performance because the whole party needs to be rebuilt. Instead of fixating on past failures focus on the progressive voices that grow every day.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#70

Post by CamperBob2 »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #67
throwaway894345 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orwell and Asimov are talking about something entirely different than drawing flawed conclusions due to inexperience—they’re talking about people with access to the facts and choosing not to believe them. For instance, Alex Pretti’s murder was recorded from several angles and yet the American right still broadly claims that he attacked the agents, that he pulled his gun on them, etc. You don’t need to be an expert in…

These Minessota videos are classic examples of what Scott Adams used to call "two different movies being played on the same screen", in this case quite literally. From the point of view of a left leaning person, that movie shows a man being assassinated for no reason at all, nothing justify what happened. From the point of view of a right leaning person, Alex Pretti was actively interfering with law enforcement, and…

You seem to be using the terms "left leaning person" and "right leaning person" when you actually mean "normal people" and "sociopaths." Left and right have nothing to do with it.
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