"It wouldn't have been so gloomy if I hadn't been so ill" - George Orwell
The novel 1984 was completed in 1948; Orwell simply reversed the last two digits to get the title. It is a famous work of literature and the obvious inspiration for Apple's groundbreaking 1984 Super Bowl ad for the forthcoming Macintosh computer. But 1984 had been lurking in the background for a long time. From Flashbak:
_In 1944, George Orwell wrote to Noel Willmett, who had asked “whether totalitarianism, leader-worship etc. are really on the up-grade” given “that they are not apparently growing in [England] and the USA”. Orwell would not start writing 1984 until 1947, his great work that introduced us to words like doublethink, thoughtcrime, memory hole, and Big Brother._
That letter of response contains a well of deep thought that has largely been ignored until recently, when 'thoughtcrimes' and 'memory hole' became reality. And can Big Brother and mandatory 24-hour clocks now be too far behind? Like Atlas Shrugged, 1984 has crossed over the line between fantasy and reality. Have a look at the thought processes behind it all; the man was positively prescient.