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1949 was George Orwell's book "Nineteen Eightyfour" published.
Along with Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932) it is the 20th centuries most famous Dystopia.
The book is about a future where man is totally supervised by those in power, ("Big Brother is watching you"), through giant telescreens that are placed just about everywhere. To have negative thoughts about those in power is illegal and the punichment is hard. |
During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century it was very common that the sf-stories took place in a completly different world, the events were rarely taking place in the future.
Later in the 20th century, , mostly during the 50s and 60s, stories about how the future would be became popular. The most famous novels about that topic is George Orwell's "1984" (1949) and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", 1932.
In the novels in the 20s the theme of SpaceOpera were popular:
Heroes in space-armours were saving women from weird and terrifying aliens. The covers for these novels were often much more imaginative than the stories themselves.
The editor Campbell encouraged his authors to write in a realistic way about what the effects of research on technology, peoples and the society could be. He wanted them to be critical about science and write about what could happend if something went wrong. The quality of the stories increased and his magazine "Astounding Stories" became more realistic rather than imaginative.
Books at Amazon.co.uk (Europe):
1984
Brave New World
Books at Amazon.com (USA):
1984
Brave New World
http://hem.passagen.se/gumby/
Calle Åsman [emsworth [at] gmx [dot] net]
