First written in Russian in 1920 and first published in English in 1924, 'We' is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. The story takes place hundreds of years into a gloomy future, where the citizens live under the total control and surveillance of a police state, called One State. The country is made almost entirely out of glass, which makes it easier for the government to watch every move of its citizens. Citizens are ...
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First written in Russian in 1920 and first published in English in 1924, 'We' is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. The story takes place hundreds of years into a gloomy future, where the citizens live under the total control and surveillance of a police state, called One State. The country is made almost entirely out of glass, which makes it easier for the government to watch every move of its citizens. Citizens are expected to march in step, wear the prescribed uniforms, and are only able to refer to each other by their assigned numbers, rather than names. The main character is D-503, a mathematician who lives willingly under One State's strict rules until he meets and falls in love with I-330, a rebel who lives her life with the creativity and lust prohibited and feared by One State.
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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.
