I believe Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" was the first dystopian science fiction novel to be written (at the very least it was the one which inspired Orwell) and it's still one of the best. The society governed by a totalitarian form of technocratic managerialism probably resonates more in the west today than it did in its native Communist Russia of the early 1920s. Zamyatin portrays his future society, known as the One State, as deeply utopian in spirit and his protagonist's growing political disatisfaction is presented as a profound existential crisis manifesting in physical sickness, much like Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov. The narrator's war with his own conscience builds to an ending arguably more horrifying than that of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

The technocratic philosophy of the One State was derived in large part from the political writings of HG Wells, which were very much in vogue at the time and continue to influence globalist policy to this day. There aren't too many sci fi novels which will remain quite as relevant 100 years after they were written but "We" feels very much like it could be a commentary on the Current Year.

#bookstr