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If Orwell were alive today, he'd be more concerned with the world's genuine dictatorships than with the Trump administration. On April 4, almost 90 art-house movie theaters across the country will show 1984, the British film starring John Hurt, as a form of protest against President Trump's stated desire to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. The theaters say they "strongly believe in supporting the [NEA] and see any attempt to scuttle that program as an attack on free speech and creative expression through entertainment." The George Orwell novel on which the film is based, you'll recall, is the...

Dozens of cinemas across the United States are planning to screen the film adaption of George Orwell’s 1984 in protest of reports that President Donald Trump is allegedly considering cuts to arts funding.

In this collection of potential reading, Mark Yon suggests books that you may appreciate whilst considering your vote. It may have escaped your attention that during this week there are elections in the US. Whilst we do not endorse any particular candidate or party at SFFWorld (and the person mainly writing this is non-US anyway!)  but on behalf of SFFWorld we thought we would compile a list of ten SF books that use politics as an important part of their world. Be warned – not all of these are future visions you may like…

Six rather relatively well known dystopian themed movies. Excerpts taken from IMDB. If you like dystopian themed movies you've probably seen all 6. My favorite is Rollerball. Which one do you think the world is striving for? --- THX1138 -- Set in the 25th century, the story centers around a man and a woman who rebel against their rigidly controlled society. Director George Lucas. Logan's Run -- An idyllic sci-fi future has one major drawback: life must end at 30. Director Michael Anderson Roller Ball (1975) -- In a corporate-controlled future, an ultra-violent sport known as Rollerball represents the world,...

4. Newspeak Every society engages in euphemism and linguistic evolution, but is it used for good or ill? Confucius linked the misuse of vocabulary to the warfare and social breakdown of his day, and called for a "rectification of names". In 1984, Orwell lays out in detail how language can be (mis)used to deceive and control the masses. In the real world today, political correctness and euphemism are both pervasive and pervasively derided. George Carlin worked comedic wonders mocking our gutless linguistic evasions. But as funny as they are, they're not fictional: wealthy people are "job-creators"; when the government takes...

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has been voted the number one book that "every student should read before leaving secondary school" by teachers. The list of 100 novels has been chosen by 500 teachers for the National Association for the Teaching of English and the TES magazine. Orwell's dystopian work comes ahead of The Harry Potter series, which was ranked sixth, and was closely followed by Animal Farm in third place.

In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher. Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.

Brave New World (is Here!) If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.” In many...

Read Aldous Huxley’s review of 1984 he sent to George Orwell Several months after George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984 was published in 1949, Aldous Huxley sent a letter to his former French pupil. The Brave New World author had received a copy of 1984 from the publisher at Orwell's behest, but his poor eyesight prevented him from finishing the book for several months. In his letter to Orwell, the fifty-year-old author compared the two books' screwed-up futures and saw the Orwellian Oceanic dystopia as a predecessor to his own World State. Wrote Huxley in October 1949: Agreeing with all that...

In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book Robert McCrum The Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009 Article history George Orwell. Photograph: Public Domain "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Sixty years...

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. "These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military...

Justice Department officials released new guidelines Friday that empower FBI agents to use intrusive techniques to gather intelligence within the United States, alarming civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers who worry that they invite privacy violations and other abuses. The new road map allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization.