Inside its glass dome the One State is a place of mathematical precision, a community where everything belongs to everyone, and integrity, clarity, and unerring loyalty reign over all. D-503, Builder of the Integral, is an honest Cipher, ashamed of the hairy hands that link him to a barbaric ancestry. And yet he is tormented by the figure v-1, that impenetrable x, the legacy that makes him lust, imagine, that has given him a soul. Consumed by his sickness and obsessed with the mysterious I-330, he escapes outside the Wall, ...
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Inside its glass dome the One State is a place of mathematical precision, a community where everything belongs to everyone, and integrity, clarity, and unerring loyalty reign over all. D-503, Builder of the Integral, is an honest Cipher, ashamed of the hairy hands that link him to a barbaric ancestry. And yet he is tormented by the figure v-1, that impenetrable x, the legacy that makes him lust, imagine, that has given him a soul. Consumed by his sickness and obsessed with the mysterious I-330, he escapes outside the Wall, to where the humans are wild, the land is green, and plots to overthrow The Benefactor and return his civilization to natural chaos are rampant. Only The Operation can return order to the perfect world, and allow reason to win.
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Add this copy of We to cart. $13.51, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Hesperus Press.
Add this copy of We (Hesperus Modern Voices) to cart. $43.78, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Hesperus Press.
This dystopian book is similar in many ways to Nineteen Eighty-Four, but was written over twenty years earlier in bolshevik Russia. Zamyatin perceives a future in which a tiny number of survivors on Earth live in the domed city of the "One State", where their every action is regulated to the last chew of their food.
Protagonist and narrator D-503 is writing a series of notes to the 'aliens' intended to be contacted via the Integral (basically, a spaceship) that he is in charge of building. The plan is to convert even extra-terrestials to the peace and solidarity of the One State. But when D-503 encounters the heretical and elusive I-330, both his life and the narrative start to run off the rails.
Zamyatin tentatively explores conformity, both in the in 'top-down' dictatorship from the Benefactor and in the pressure of the citizens' peers. Every wall in the One State is glass; every action (except sex) is open to view. This lack of privacy is similar to Orwell's ubiquitous viewscreens, except that here, there is literally no corner in which to hide.
Sadly, D-503 proves to be no hero.
This translation is readable and the story moves along at a reasonable pace. The book is only short, especially when compared to Orwell's lengthy tome. Definitely worth reading both in order to make a comparison, and it was instructive to see where Orwell may have got some of his ideas.