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A comment on It needs more public-spirited pigs: TS Eliot's rejection of Orwell's Animal Farm. Parent comment

Re:It needs more public-spirited pigs: TS Eliot's rejection ... by sievebrain on Saturday May 28, 2016 @06:20PM (#11793842)
In short, if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction.

But 1984 was clearly not written to be sci-fi; other than the tele-screens it has very little in the way of interesting technology or development. It is intended to be a political story on the dangers of totalitarianism and is normally judged by that standard. Which rightly makes it a classic!

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Re:It needs more public-spirited pigs: TS Eliot's rejection ... by barrkel on Saturday May 28, 2016 @09:41PM (#11794399)
What 1984 has is a ubiquity of surveillance, something that couldn't be done in 1948 when it was written. This is an SF concept: it changes something about 1948 society, and runs the simulation. Nothing could be more clearly sci-fi.
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