“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” So begins 1984, author George Orwell’s frightening novel about citizens under the thrall of a dictatorship. “Big Brother is watching you” is a threat and a warning to the populace that is surveilled by the all-seeing eye of the “telescreen” that tracks their every move while also pacifying them with cheap entertainment and state propaganda. “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength” are watchwords of the shadowy, thuggish regime in Orwell’s cautionary tale of tyranny rampant in a future world where courage is quashed...
